Miguel Rojo from Madrid wins the XXIV SGAE Children’s Theater Award – Artezblai

With ‘Naunet and the sea’, a poetic work about children’s mental health

The SGAE Foundation has granted the 24th SGAE Children’s Theater Award 2023 to the Madrid playwright Miguel Rojofor his work ‘Naunet and the sea’. Through this award we wish to promote the creation of new dramatic texts that, both for the quality and originality of their dialogues, and for their scenic vision, contribute to the enrichment of the theatrical panorama aimed at family audiences.

The award ceremony will take place this Saturday, November 25, at the Berlanga Room of Madrid, coinciding with the dramatized reading of the winning work in the previous edition of the contest, ‘Mambrú returns from the war by Carlos Labraña‘. The SGAE Children’s Theater Award is endowed with 8,000 euros, the publication of the text in the Sopa de Libros collection, co-edited by the SGAE Foundation and Anaya, and its staging within the framework of Theater in Berlanga.

Open to various interpretations, although focused on a highly topical issue such as mental health in minors, ‘Naunet and the sea’ It is a work in a poetic tone about a girl who falls into the sea and begins to slowly sink, while on the way to the seabed she looks around her, reflects on life and, with some hope, tries to return to the surface. «I think that little is said about childhood and youth depression, about those moments in which many girls and boys feel alone and dejected in the face of the world. They don’t know why they sink, why things happen,” explains Miguel Rojo. And he adds: «In Naunet and the sea “I wanted to create a symbolic gesture in which boys and girls can feel identified, name a sensation, that of sinking, to put it on the table so that we can understand it.”

Children’s theater takes flight

Miguel Rojo combines the writing of texts for adults with works aimed at children and young people. He hopes, in fact, that the SGAE Children’s Theater Award will stimulate and give him courage to “advance on this path of meeting young people, because literature and theater aimed at them seem very important to me. They are great interlocutors for the arts and I love to dialogue with them through writing. Society advances and young people with it, but they are not always taken into account. Therefore, it is very important to ask them what they think, how they see the world,” he says.

In this process, competitions such as the one organized by the SGAE Foundation are essential, since they contribute “to the genre becoming consolidated and of interest to more and more people. There have always been playwrights and companies that have worked on children’s theater, but it seems that in recent years it is being strengthened and taking off more,” he adds.

The playwright also reveals that this award makes him especially excited as he joins an already long list of award-winning authors, including, in the 2019 edition, Rocío Bello and Javier Hernandoyour colleagues in the company The Barbarians and with whom he shares “the pleasure of children’s literature and theater, but also my own life.”

Chaired by the winner of the XIII SGAE Children’s Theater Award, Carlos Labraña, the jury of the 2023 edition was made up of the creator and performer Elisa Ramos, the directors and producers Sergi Ots and Alex Díaz Monsalve, and the children’s literature editor and youth from Grupo Anaya Pablo Cruz, who wanted to highlight “the high level of the works that have been presented this year, very mature and of great quality.”

‘Naunet and the sea’ It won out of a total of 61 originals submitted to the contest. For the jury, the winner is “a work rich in content and that adds other transversal issues such as friendship, climate change or equality to the main theme. Furthermore, the fantastic narrative allows for a very visual staging, with very extensive scenographic possibilities and performing disciplines.