After two years no live award show because of Covid, the face-to-face PlayRight+ awards are back! The PlayRight+ awards are a reward for graduating students to support emerging artists selected by their teachers on the basis of their qualities as performers. We present to you: the winners of Ghent edition 2022!

Darya Gantura, artist and member of the PlayRight Board of Directors was the ambassador of this PlayRight+ awards ceremony. This year, the teachers of the Conservatory of Ghent have selected one student from the department Music and one student from the department Dramatic Arts.

Roberta Zonca (pop song)

The educational team that selected Roberta as a winner said the following:

“Roberta Zonca gave a wonderful concert during the second year of her master’s. She takes risks in melody, harmony and technique, but knows how to combine these 3 elements flawlessly, at the same time. Her musical sense, her finesse, her in-depth lyrics in her native language resulted in an impressive concert where emotion was never far away.”

Jef Hellemans (drama)

Jan Steen, director of the department Dramatic Arts at the Conservatory of Ghent had this to say about Jef:

“Jef Hellemans investigates a physical and a-psychological game register in Pinocchio. In his research, he starts from a body that, by making it mechanical, becomes strange and comical. With this body idea he explores the boundaries of being human in an intermediate area between body, machine and avatar. Jef plays with a great sense for timing. What mastery of the body! He has every fibre under control in a game register that is situated somewhere between dance and clowning. At times, he makes his body so malleable and elastic that it sometimes leads to funny slapstick. We get to see a body that struggles, wants to break free, tragic and comic at the same time, but above all, always with such beautiful poetry.” Congratulations, again to these two winners! Around September, October, a new round of award ceremonies will take place!