The Illiterate (Women) Book Club

When Maria Theresa introduced compulsory primary education in 1774, the literacy rates began to rise in Slovenia. Those who had somehow managed to evade schooling were targeted once again after World War II, when the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia embarked on an ambitious mass literacy campaign. A wave of literacy courses swept across the entire country. Literacy spread with the same fervour as electrification. Not just children—workers, farmers, and even women learned to read and write. Like it or not, you had to do it. People get used to all sorts of hardships, and over time, reading too became something that was taken for granted. Yet so many years later, we are facing a crisis of literacy again; around the world, literacy and the right to it are once again anything but taken for granted.

In this comedy, the young author plays with the idea of a book club as a space where reading is not a solitary and quiet activity, but rather a social event: reading aloud, discovering the meanings of words, and debating. Whether they like it or not, a group of women finds themselves in the club, united by very little things—except for the fact that they have to learn to read the same book. But between the lines of the book, other stories begin to emerge. Reading aloud, after all, has an inconvenient quality—it is heard. The text is being created as part of the Ljubljana City Theatre's Residency Programme.

Iva Štefanija Slosar (1998) is a freelance dramaturg and playwright. She studied dramaturgy at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television (AGRFT), University of Ljubljana, and at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb. Her plays How the Pope Laughs and Light My Bonfire were nominated for the Young Playwright Award in 2023 and 2025. For her comedy Democracy Was Invented in the Agora the First Time Around and at the Fire Station the Second, she received the Zofka Kveder Award for Excellence in Comedy (2026). In her creative work, she uses comedy and humour to explore the issues of community and social change.

After graduating from high school in Klagenfurt, Julija Urban (1995) studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies, University of Vienna. Since 2022, she has been studying theatre directing at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television, University of Ljubljana. Her production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet has received several awards, including the award for best director, the award for special achievement for the dramaturgical and directorial interpretation of Ophelia’s empowerment, and the award for best production. She sees theatre as an inherently political and socially engaged practice, and comedy as a form with particular power and depth for the subversive exploration of complex social themes.