Drama studio Ilirik, founded by Silvana Dragun in 2009 in Split. gathers theatre and film professionals, musicians, drama educators, psychologists and art therapists. There are two ensembles, both professional and amateur offering to young people with no experience opportunities to get engaged in a variety of workshops:
• Stage speech and movement
• Creative writing
• Forum theatre and process drama
• Communication skills improvement
• Scene design, etc
"Affirmative theatre should promote basic human values instead of "new brutalism". We consider that swear words and asocial behavior models need no additional promotion in the theatre and film industry. The reality we live in is so rude that there is no need to clone it on the stage because that's the way we let it serve as the culture of death. Otherwise, we want to be a part of culture of life. In other words, take a pathway difficult to go through. However, only that way we could oppose those trends of postmodernism that deprive the human dignity, humanity and transcendental dimension, and turn it into a figure, consuming goods and machine. The theatre is a tool for introspection and maturing whence we experience truth about oneself pulling out different masks. But that does not mean we should denude and nullify in nihilism, dehumanization and fragmentation of everything. An alienated man of the 21st millennium needs ascetic-affirmative artist to get him back to beauty origin and enlightenment, or what the Greeks called kalokagathia. We want to give the actor back dignity thus setting him free from the shackles of dictatorship of relativism and nihilism. We want to say loud and clear that violence has no therapeutic function, and that the artist is by all means socially responsible being.
An affirmative artist is not afraid of critical and prophetic voice about the social reality. In our theatre for man there will be enough place for religious drama and liturgical hymnody, social and classic drama, etc. We are interested in the audience which grew up on pop culture as well as those who prefer opera and classical literature."
Silvana Dragun