Professor Wole Soyinka, the 1986 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, has won this year’s The Europe Theatre Prize. Announcing the award, the General Sec
Professor Wole Soyinka, the 1986 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, has won this year’s The Europe Theatre Prize. Announcing the award, the General Secretary, The Europe Theatre Prize, Alessandro Martinez, said Professor Wole Soyinka won the Special Prize category of the award for his consistency as a proponent of an ideal bridge between Europe and Africa in a deeply delicate period for the present and the future of our continent.
Wole Soyinka was praised for his deep commitment to combining at the highest level, his own cultural political experience with those of others in different climes for peace and civil co-existence among peoples of the world.
The award will be conferred on him in the evening of 17 December this year in Rome, Italy, during the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome and the G7 meeting. Former winners of this prestigious award included Vaclav Havel, one of the most important European writers, and a former president of the Czech Republic.
The Europe Theatre Prize which was established in 1986 as a pilot project of the European Commission under the Presidency of Jacques Delors, is awarded to personalities of theatrical institutions that have contributed to the realization of cultural events that promote understanding and exchange of knowledge between peoples.
According to Alessandro Martinez, the award ceremony of The Europe Theatre Prize, right from its inception, has become a privileged meeting.
“As a matter of fact, on the occasion of the last award ceremony, there were participants coming from more than fifty countries in the world and about 400 journalists and theatre critics from Europe and other parts of the world.”
