Tanja Mastilo

Tanja Mastilo is a Serbian-Danish writer, who had her playwriting debut in 2015 with production ’Secrets’, (Why Not Theatre Company, Copenhagen), which was nominated for the best international production in Denmark for that year by one of the leading Danish theatre blogs (www.cphculture.dk). Since then, Tanja has written ‘Mr Tesla Played’, a monologue about the life of Nikola Tesla, performed as a pop-up production in various venues in Copenhagen, as well as other parts of Denmark and Sweden (Steampunk Festival, Eskilstuna, 2017); the critically acclaimed ’Mairead’ (Teatret Ved Sorte Hest, 2019), “The Cheyenne are Leaving” (Teatret ved Sorte Hest 2020), for which Tanja won the prestigious Danish theatre award, Reumert, for Playwright of the Year, 2021; and most recently an adaptation of ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley. (Teatret ved Sorte Hest, 2023).

In 2017 Tanja was one of the 4 playwrights invited to participate in ‘The Cold Table’, a 48-hour chaos theatre project, where 4 playwrights, 4 directors, and 16 actors from varying cultural and artistic backgrounds meet to challenge each other and develop 4 new 20-minute plays. The Cold Table has been performed many times over the years in professional theatres around Denmark and abroad.

Tanja has published ‘The Trials of Oscar Wilde’ (2009), a discourse analysis of newspaper articles covering the trials of Oscar Wilde that took place in the Spring of 1895.

Tanja has been a member of Why Not Theatre’s board since its inception in 2011.