The drama anthology Marin Držić Award. Croatian Drama 2024 contains six dramatic works awarded in the 2024 Ministry of Culture and Media competition of the Republic of Croatia "Marin Držić." Traditionally, alongside the presentation of the anthology, 4th-year students of the Master’s Program in Acting at UMAS, under the mentorship of Prof. Art. Bruno Bebić, will read this year's first-place awarded drama text by Dora Šustić.

Dora Šustić: Pičman
In brief, Pičman by Dora Šustić is a chamber psychological drama about suicide and its consequences on the surrounding environment, not overlooking the still prevalent social stigmatization of suicide. In a slightly more elaborate form, the drama seeks to identify and understand certain forms of human dissatisfaction, and at times particular causes such as PTSD, which lie at the root of the desire to take one’s own life. It also attempts to detect and articulate the various types of micro- and macro-traumas faced by those close to suicide, particularly their families and children, in this case, the protagonist Ena. In the opening note, the dramatic heroine, who is also a writer, interprets the three parts of the drama as a "reconstruction" of three conversations she had, first with her father, then with a psychotherapist, and finally with herself, imagining that she is talking to her father and saying all the things she wanted or should have said but didn’t. The first conversation relates to the time before the father’s suicide. It serves as a premonition, announcement, and, to some extent, explanation, while simultaneously establishing the psychological and character profiles of the father and daughter and their emotional relationship. The other two conversations concern the time after the father’s suicide and serve as a breakdown of the intimate spiritual and mental state of the daughter, who is trying to learn how to live with her father's decision, wavering between the possibility of accepting and justifying it or rejecting and denying it as legitimate, or between feelings of guilt and forgiveness, both for herself and for her father. The dramatic structure and the central theme of the play become more complex through the construction of a biographical story within the story, a script that the daughter attempts to write about the life of a well-known Croatian architect who also took his own life after not receiving timely understanding and support from the community. This subtle element of the play raises the question of the survival of artists, intellectuals, and visionaries in an alienated society predominantly focused on material values. (Jury's explanation for this year's Marin Držić Award)