Soila Valkama is a director, a dramaturge and an actress. She studied acting at Ecole Jacques Lecoq and Ecole d’art dramatique Florent, cours libre 1989-92 in Paris. 1993 Valkama returned to Finland and worked as an actress and studied directing at the Theatre Academy of Finland and on a Henrik Steffens Preis scholarship from the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung at the Enrst Busch Hochschule fur Schauspielkunst, where she also taught acting. She graduated in 1998, as Master of Arts from the Theatre Academy of Finland with a major in directing. Soila Valkama has worked as an actress at the Finnish National Theatre, Turku City Theatre, several smaller theatres, in television and in the radio. She has directed and adapted plays for the Lahti City Theatre, for various small theatre groups and for television and radio. She taught radio directing, acting and dramaturgy at the University of Birzeit on the West Bank in 1998 and has worked as a director, dramaturge, producer, and content developer with the Finnish Broadcasting Company since 1999. National awards: Sokeain kuunnelma Award: 2008, 2011, 2014, 2015 and 2019. Koura Award 2015 and Koura honourable mention: 2013, 2016, 2020, 2021 and 2022 International awards: YLE’s winning drama entry to Prix Europa 2010. Bulgarian National radio’s winning documentary entry to Prix Marulic 2013. YLE’s winning Ars Acustica entry to Prix Marulic 2014.
Jean-Claude Kuner was born in 1954, in Basel, Switzerland. After his studies in Berlin, he worked as a director of theatre and opera in various theatres and opera houses across Germany (1982–1996) and as a producer of music programmes in the radio. Based in Berlin, he had also spent several years in the USA. Interested in contemporary American music he has interviewed a range of composers featuring their music; among them George Crumb, John Cage, Steve Reich, Lou Harrison, Elliott Carter and John Zorn.
In 1996, he left the theatre and since then worked exclusively as a freelance author and director for documentary, radio drama, sound art and music broadcasts in Germany and Switzerland and in international cooperations with ABC Australia and YLE Finland.
His radio documentary work deals mainly with cultural and social issues. Among them: a portrait of the late pianist Grete Sultan in New York, exiled from Germany during WWII; a documentary about the Dabbawallahs, the meal delivery system in Mumbai; a docudrama on Samuel Beckett for his centennial. Most recently he produced a podcast series for SRF Switzerland, together with Swiss writer Thomas Hürlimann, premiering in June 2023 – Fährhausgespräche.
His experiments combining radio drama and documentary have won him several awards, nominations and special commendations, among them Prix Marulic, the Basler Featurepreis, Premios Ondas, Prix Italia, Prix Europa and an award of the Asian-Pacific-Broadcasting Union 2013. In the same year, his radio drama Dreamroles had been selected as Radio Drama of the Year by the German Academy of Performing Arts.
