Nina Armstrong, of Georgetown University, will participate in the Encounters – an international festival of theater schools organized by JAMU, Brno.

Nina Armstrong is one of two winners of the 2023 Contest for the Best Mini-Drama with her play entitled Care. The play subtly depicts the generational conflict between a young girl and her grandparents, who are immigrants from Slovenia. The difference in values is not portrayed by a direct clash of opinions; rather the play depicts hidden conflict, working strongly with subtext. Against the verbal dominance of the grandparents, at once affectionate and usurping (supported by the obsessive motif of the constant offering of food), stands the girl’s eloquent silence, which has an ambiguous stage potential.

This year’s prompt was based on the Vanek Trilogy and a quote from the principal essay by Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless:

Yet even in [totalitarian] societies, individuals and groups of people exist who do not abandon politics as a vocation and who, in one way or another, strive to think independently, to express themselves and in some cases even organize politically, because that is a part of their attempt to live within the truth.

Nina Armstrong is a graduating senior at Georgetown University majoring in Russian and Political Science with a minor in English. Next year she will finish her accelerated Masters of Arts in Eurasian, Russian, and East European studies at Georgetown. She enjoys studying Slavic languages, translation, and ice skating. Her language study will take her to Slovenia this summer at the University of Ljubljana. She looks forward to participating in the Encounter festival and to exploring Brno!