User:Bjarni Jónsson

BJARNI JÓNSSON is an Icelandic playwright, born in 1966. Having worked as a seaman and a construction worker, he later moved to Munich where he finished a master degree in theatre studies in 1992. He wrote his first play, Korkmann, in 1989. It was done as a staged reading at the Icelandic National Theatre in 1992. Jónsson´s first play to be performed was Mark, in 1994. In 1998 the play Coffee was staged at the National Theatre. The production was invited to Bonn for the New Plays in Europe Festival and was later produced as a radio piece by the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne. For “Coffee” Bjarni Jónsson got a nomination for the 2000 Nordic Drama Award 2000. The Burning Road, was staged at the Icelandic National Theatre in 2004 and in 2005 the Reykjavik City Theatre staged Where The Winds Dwell and The Tree Of Life, two plays about Icelandic immigrants in 19th Century Canada. Jónsson´s Mishap! opened at the Icelandic National Theatre in September 2007. For this play he was nominated for the Icelandic Theatre Prize and the 2008 Nordic Drama Award. The play was published in the Polish Theater Magazine DIALOG in April 2009. The Vote, commissioned by the Akureyri City Theatre, opened in January 2009 and a little later The Soft Serve Machine was produced as a part of the Icelandic National Theatre´s project for young actors. Bjarni Jónsson has translated numerous plays and novels by authors such as Harold Pinter, Mark Ravenhill, Neil LaBute, David Gieselmann, Marius von Mayenburg, Thomas Bernhard, Roddy Doyle, George Tabori, Tennessee Williams and Günter Grass. He has frequently worked as a dramaturge and as a director of radio drama. In 2007 he wrote and directed a trilogy for radio: The Key, The Sprinter and The Fortune Blogger. For this trilogy Jónsson received the Icelandic Theatre Prize 2008 in the catagory Radio Drama. In 2004 Bjarni Jónsson was awarded the Nordic Prize for Radio Drama for The Wheel Of Sleep, a production done in collaboration with the band múm. Their latest work of collaboration, In Your Eyes, was broadcast last December.


 * Stand: 04/09