Magic Nut – a Festival of Radio Fairy Stories
The purpose of the Magic Nut festival is to offer presentations and competitive confrontations between radio drama productions, and meetings of producers with listeners to radio fairy tales and bedtime story programmes – including children and their parents, teachers and librarians.
The Magic Nut Festival of Radio Fairy Stories is subtitled 'The Book in the Radio – the Radio in the Book'. A competitive festival of fairy story production, it was launched in 2001 and is held very two years. Festival entries are selected by the Literary and Drama Centre of Slovak Radio. Organisers of the festival include Piešťany Municipal Government, Piešťany Municipal Library and Slovak Radio. The categories of the contest include fairy plays and monologue-type of fairy stories. The Magic Nut Awards are given by expert and children’s juries in each category of the contest to the authors and producers of the radio programmes, and to the publisher of the original books. A Slovak Radio Special Award is given to a writer, actor or director whose work has made major impact on radio dramatic production for children.
The Fifth Magic Nut Festival took place from 21-24 May 2008 in Piešťany. The expert jury gave: awards for monologue-type fairy stories to the radio rendition of the fairy story Trees by Vincko Zelienka from the cycle Fairy Stories from the Palette and to Matica Slovenská Publishing House for the publication of the book Fairy Stories from the Palette; and awards for fairy plays to the radio rendition of the fairy play The Unusual Week and to the Regent Publishing House for publication of the book Fairy Stories from the Cabinet. The children’s jury gave awards for monologue–type fairy stories to the radio rendition of the fairy story Emil from Lönneberga by Astrid Lindgren and to the Slovart Publishing House for publishing the book Emil from Lönneberga; and an award for fairy plays to the radio rendition of the fairy play The Factory-Made Boy by Christine Nöstlinger Conrad. The Slovak Radio Special award went to the actor Marián Geišberg.
