Theatre Festival Research Articles

Implicit cultural policies in Zimbabwe: insights from Stephen Joel Chifunyise’s plays and theatre

Sometimes cultural policies are dismissed and criticized by some artists and cultural practitioners as banal and other times they are deemed pivotal in the democratization of culture, cultural democracy and the advancement of a democratic society. This ambivalent perception of arts and cultural policies results in many missed opportunities in the production and distribution of cultural and creative expressions like plays and theatre. This paper sets out to answer the question about how cultural policies shape the advancement of cultural and creative expressions in post-independence Zimbabwe. Stephen Joel Chifunyise’s plays and theatre as case examples provide insightful snippets of the role and power of cultural policies in the advancement of the cultural and creative sector and the broader society. This is achieved through a review of academic publications, policy documents and cultural policy texts. The theoretical lens partially deployed here is interpretive policy analysis, which reads the meaning of cultural policies through authored and constructed policy texts such as plays, theatre productions, theatre infrastructure, theatre festivals, publishing houses, book fairs, policy documents and public pronouncements. In addition to the interpretive policy analysis, I also deploy the concept of explicit and implicit cultural policies to comprehensively look at the role of direct cultural policies and indirect cultural policies in the theatre sector in Zimbabwe. The second lens is used to analyse the impact of Zimbabwean implicit and explicit cultural policies on the theatre sector through Chifunyise’s plays and theatre. In critically answering the central question, this paper argues that Zimbabwe has several implicit cultural policies whose effect on the theatre is felt more through constructed cultural policy texts than authored cultural policy texts, and thus, all cultural expressions are inevitably shaped by one cultural policy or the other.

Staging anxiety through magical realism: A practice-based exploration in two theatrical productions

Anxiety disorders are prevalent in everyday life, yet theatrical realism often struggles to capture and convey the lived experiences from the points of view of those affected. This practice-based research explores how magical realism can serve as an alternative mode of representation to depict the internal experiences of characters with anxiety disorders on stage. The study began with a literature review on magical realism and anxiety disorders, identifying key characteristics that informed the development of performances. Through a devising process, the research culminated in two distinct productions: “The Practice,” a devised piece created with a group of seven actors and showcased at the Bangkok Theatre Festival in November 2022, and “As Fa As Farida,” a solo performance developed collaboratively by the researcher-director and an actor, staged in May and June 2023 at the Faculty of Communication Arts, Chulalongkorn University. Despite differences in scale and presentation, both performances were able to portray the inner worlds of characters with anxiety disorders through the essence of magical realism, characterized by four main themes identified through thematic analysis: the interplay of reality and fantasy, the disruption of space and time, metatheatrical reflections on society and identity, and voices from the margins. The insights from this study can guide future theatrical experiments and be applied across various media, including literature, film, and other art forms.

Voicing TYA festival’s audiences: reception of the Haifa International Children’s Theatre Festival

ABSTRACT The Haifa International Children's Theatre Festival is an annual family theatre festival held in Haifa. This qualitative reception study focuses on young audiences and the adults accompanying them. Considering the festival as a comprehensive theatrical event, this study explores how it is perceived by Israeli children and parents. Drawing on the interviews, our analysis explores the reception process, involving a sequence of actions undertaken by parents and children that result in a distinctive family experience. These actions include: choosing plays to attend; mediating theatrical knowledge; participating in performances; celebrating the festival as a theatrical event, and reviewing performances they attended.

Exploring the Impact of Event Organization on Visitor Satisfaction at Theatre Festivals

Visitor satisfaction at theatre festivals refers to the positive experience and enjoyment that attendees derive from well-organized events. This study evaluates the impact of various organizational factors on visitor satisfaction at theatre festivals, utilizing comprehensive data collected from 250 visitors and 250 event organizers. The research design incorporated detailed questionnaires and demographic data to assess key aspects such as programming and scheduling, venue management, ticketing processes, customer service, facilities, safety, and transportation. SPSS software had been used to implement factor and regression analyses were employed to determine the relative importance of these factors. The findings reveal that programming and scheduling significantly influence festival success, while venue management and ticketing also play important roles. In contrast, transportation, amenities, and facilities had minimal impact. The cumulative variance analysis confirmed the comprehensive influence of all factors combined. These insights suggest that future improvements should focus on optimizing programming and scheduling while addressing the broader range of variables affecting festival performance and attendee satisfaction.

Culture as a Resilient and Sustainable Strategy in Small Cities

This article studies the recent evolution of five cases of small cities in the interior of Spain that several decades ago invested in culture as a strategy to maintain their populations and increase the quality of life of their inhabitants. These are case studies of differentiated characteristics in which the analysis of their evolution offers important keys for developing cultural policies in any small city in the world. The examples of Allariz, Almagro, Astorga, Puigcerdá and Trujillo allow for the corroboration of how betting on culture as a resilient and sustainable strategy generates positive results for their populations. Allariz, in the province of Ourense, is showing a cultural identity development that emerged as a movement to reject the pollution of the Arnoia River. In Almagro, in the La Mancha province of Ciudad Real, the recovery in 1955 of the only Corral de Comedias preserved since the 17th century allowed for the inauguration in 1979 of the first Almagro Classical Theatre Festival, and from then on, a whole series of restorations and new constructions related to theater and the performing arts, which turned a small town of less than 10,000 inhabitants into the national theater capital. Astorga is a small two-thousand-year-old city in the province of León, which is trying to recover as a living history museum to face the current reality of demographic and economic crises. Puigcerdá, in the province of Girona, the historic capital of Cerdanya, is another small town in which cultural management and production is much larger than it would be corresponding to its demographic size. Lastly, Trujillo, in the Extremadura province of Cáceres, a city of pre-Roman origin known in the 16th century as the birthplace of conquistadors in America such as Francisco Pizarro and Francisco de Orellana, is another small town of less than 10,000 inhabitants that is committed to creating and maintaining a rich cultural agenda with an important weight for the history and relationship between America and Spain and the recovery of the civil and religious heritage of this small monumental city. These are five enclaves, in summary, that have for years followed a clear strategy of betting on identity and culture to improve the well-being of their inhabitants and the local development of their economy, and which, as this research demonstrates, have made it possible to avoid the biggest problems of the impoverishment and abandonment of other nearby towns with similar characteristics.

Sensing a Twenty-First-Century Commons in the Theater: Relationality in a Climate of Distrust and Destruction

Abstract Conceptualizations of a “commons” have recently been gaining traction in theorizations of specific locations, gatherings, and activism in and beyond the arts. A theater-based commons that adopts a planetary and relational approach to selfhood, interaction, and future survival on Planet Earth tends to focus on breaking with social, political, economic, and aesthetic hierarchies. I will first introduce how notions of relationality have been integrated in theorizations of solidarity, humanitarian action, and a commons. Then, I will discuss these theorizations within the contexts of theater as communication and action that involves both theater-makers and audience members as actants. Finally, I intend to show how these conceptualizations can be meaningfully applied to unraveling the artistic strategies of a broad array of plays associated with the biannual theater festival Climate Change Theatre Action, which has been taking place before and after the United Nations Conference of the Parties climate conferences since 2015. The examples from the corpus of 250 five-minute plays are to illustrate the intervention of climate-change theater in potentially insurgent commons-based engagement and thinking which tries to avoid virtue signaling and other self-promoting forms of supposed solidarity.

Narratives of Blended Experience

Abstract This paper focuses on interaction across and between the physical/digital divide. We use blending theory to design for these situations, otherwise known as conceptual integration. Initially, this paper offers a discussion of the literature around blends. From this literature, we applied Benyon’s (Benyon, 2014) proposition of conceptual integration in mixed reality spaces (Blended Spaces) to consider interactions with the digital that complement the physical. We investigated blended spaces in partnership with undergraduate students during a live theatre festival. Our collaborators designed applications that applied blending principles, employing techniques drawn from speculative design. Outputs consist of speculative, narrative storyboards that use data gathered directly from stakeholder interviews and over 380 festival visitors. Our work led us to propose reworking Blended Spaces into a model that novice designers could easily conceive and apply. The work we conducted highlighted the need to consider user transitions from physical to digital and back again and highlighted the experiential nature of this type of interaction.

A FRANCIA NYELVŰ EGYETEMI SZÍNJÁTSZÁSRÓL: AZ ÉCOLE DES BOUFFONS

At the University of Debrecen, French-language student acting began with the drama courses held by Judit Lukovszki at the Department of French Studies. As a result of the growing interest the group, whose members were mainly French major students, was given a name in 1985: École des Bouffons. The Bouffons set at least one play on stage every year, made guest appearances at domestic and foreign theatre festivals, and undertook the organization of four theatre meetings between 1998 and 2002 in Debrecen. The Bouffons, apparently at the height of its success, ceased to exist in 2002, the year of the last theatre meeting, due to the lack of the students’ interest. In addition to an outline of the group's history, this paper intends to commemorate the former players

Construction and Image Communication of Urban Cultural Space under the Collision of Modern Art Elements and Chinese Traditional Culture: A Case Study of the Wuzhen Theatre Festival

Since its inception in 2013, the Wuzhen Theatre Festival has gradually grown into one of the most influential theatre festivals at home and abroad. As one of the brand characteristic events, it has helped Wuzhen transition from a traditional Jiangnan ancient town to a well-known cultural landmark through media communication. This paper aims to analyze the multiple cultural spaces presented in the Wuzhen Theatre Festival, explore how this medium combines modern art elements with Jiangnan culture, builds a bridge between high art and ordinary people, thereby endowing Wuzhen with a more diversified international image. It also attempts to summarize the enlightenment of the Wuzhen Theatre Festival on the construction of urban cultural space and image in China today.

WHY THEATRE? PERSPECTIVES FROM INDIAN THEATRE ARTISTES IN THE CONTEXT OF NĀṬYAŚĀSTRA

Nāṭyaśāstra is an Indian ancient Sanskrit text on dramaturgy written by Āchārya Bhartmuni in the 5th century. The story of the origin, development, and evolution of Nāṭyaśāstra is described in the very first chapter of the text. It also reveals the emergence of theatre practice. According to Nāṭyaśāstra, theatre serves the purpose of entertaining as well as educating its audiences. This paper aims to examine the contemporary theatre practice on the principle of Nāṭyaśāstra in this context. The objective of the present research paper is to study the motivation, inspiration, and purpose of contemporary theatre practitioners under the light of the purpose of theatre according to Nāṭyaśāstra.The present research is qualitative. The methodology employed for data collection is the interview of 46 theatre practitioners using semi-structured interviews. The data has been collected from prominent theatre festivals held in five different North Indian cities namely Delhi, Bhopal, Jaipur, Lucknow, and Patna. The analysis of the interviews is done using thematic analysis.The findings of the research show that contemporary theatre practitioners have personal aspirations as well as social obligations to practising theatre. Contemporary theatre practitioners also believe that theatre is a medium of entertainment as well as sensitizing people which aligns with the principle of Nāṭyaśāstra.

Chinghiz Aitmatov’s Mythopoetic Picture of the World through the Context of Modern Stage Interpretations (In Russian)

The theatrical process in Central Asia is characterized by a common history of formation and development, basic principles and at the same time the originality and artistic heterogeneity of national theaters. A theater festival that is currently acquiring important significance as a space for dialogue between cultures serves as an indicator of its transformation in the region. Using the example of the winning performances of the VI International Theater Festival “Aitmatov and Theater” (2023), the mythopoetic picture of the world of Chinghiz Aitmatov is studied in the context of modern stage interpretations.The festival featured productions of prose rather than drama. This determined the features of the aesthetic structure of performances created within logocentric oriental cultures. The article analyzes the performances of Ulanmyrzha Karypbayev, one of the leading young directors in Central Asia. His productions such as “Borandy becket” (Station under Storm) and “Ak keme” (White Steamship) were among the best. They reveal the most characteristic features of U. Karypbayev as a director: a rich metaphorical system, theatrical polyphony, ritualization, grotesque, complex mise-en-scène. A large-scale play “Zhan pida” (Scaffold) directed by Nurkanat Zhakypbai current open the topics of historical memory, national identity and essential issues of existence. His stage interpretation is characterized by multi-layered visuals, exquisite plastic solutions, picturesque crowd scenes, a complex musical score, and a monologue principle in the acting performance. The directors Bair Badmayev and Gafur Mardanov created the story of Mother’s life path in the context of the national picture of the world in the stage versions of Mother Earth.The festival demonstrated a modern theatrical interpretation of Aitmatov’s works in Central Asia, characterized by leaving a usual path of words on stage and turning to more deeper interpretations. It is obvious that compositionally complex stage works are created with all components existing on an equal basis: words, stage action, scenography, rich plastic score, authentic musical sequence with performers on stage. Directors raise current issues, artistically comprehend reality and embody it in ideas, images, stage solutions that reflect the richness and diversity of the theatrical art in Central Asia.

WELCOME TO THE BAZAAR! THE KAZAKHSTAN STUDENT EXHIBITION AT PQ 2023

This review explores the work of the Kazakhstan Student Exhibit at the Prague Quadrennial in June 2023. In doing so, we contextualize the exhibit within the international festival, describing its concepts and accompanying performances, including Cooper’s Trading Post, «Kurt,» the «Day of Tea,» and the Nauryz Celebration. The notes presented here are based on first-hand observations as well as individual interviews with the design and production team members present at PQ. To accompany this work, we also reflect on the cross-cultural collaborations behind the exhibition, which are the culmination of a five-year relationship between a university in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and Conway, SC, in the United States. Thus, the interviews conducted during the second half of the 10-day festival provide not only insight into design and performance choices, but also the processes behind a student-ledcollaboration between two cohorts from Theatre and Design programs separated across time and space. In this way, while we locate the exhibit as a display of scenographic art and performance from the Central Asian nation, we also provide suggestions for international collaboration in designing a display for theatre festivals that may provide a framework for others working on similar projects in the future.

Much Ado About Nothing by Stratford Shakespeare Festival at the Festival Theatre (review)

Much Ado About Nothing by Stratford Shakespeare Festival at the Festival Theatre (review)

The Orlando Fringe: An Overview

This paper provides a brief overview of the Orlando Fringe, which started in 1992 with the Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival, which is considered the longest-running Fringe theatre festival in the United States. The paper opens with a discussion of the origins and structure of Fringe festivals and then focuses on the history and organization of the Orlando Fringe, using a variety of sources, including an interview with former Executive Director George A. Wallace.

Passion and Politics in Diego de Brea and Jakub Čermák’s "Edward II": Marlowe’s Controversial History on Czech Stages

The present article outlines the stage history of Christopher Marlowe’s history Edward II on Czech stages, focusing chiefly on how the respective directors approached the titular character of Marlowe’s play and his sexuality. The study focuses on two post-2000 productions of the play: Diego de Brea’s Edvard Drugy for the Slovenian National Theatre, which toured to the 16th “Divadlo” International Theatre Festival in Pilsen, West Bohemia, in 2008; and Jakub Čermák’s production of Edvard II. for the independent Czech theatre company “Depresivní děti touží po penězích” (Depressive Children Yearn for Money) that premiered in 2023 in Prague. Since for both Czechs and Slovenians, King Edward II is a minor figure of English history and Elizabethan history plays are generally less appealing to them than other genres, both the directors sideline the political dimension of the story to fully explore the issue of social and sexual norms and relate it to current social and cultural discussions both in the West and the former Eastern Bloc. Stressing the motif of social and sexual otherness even more bravely than most recent Western productions, de Brea and Čermák offered not only valuable contributions to both local and global reception of Marlowe’s Edward II, but also raised the visibility of LGBT theatre in a region where it has only a modest history and tradition.

Intercultural Perspective on Drama Adaptation: A Case Study of "Waiting for Godot" (2023 Wuzhen Theatre Festival Edition)

This paper conducts an in-depth study on "intercultural" drama adaptation in the context of globalization, taking the version of "Waiting for Godot" presented at the 2023 Wuzhen Theatre Festival as a case study. It explores how to make innovative and profound intercultural adaptations while retaining the spiritual core of the original work. The article proposes and applies analytical perspectives such as "form and physicality, "emphasizing the importance of preserving the "core" meaning of the original work during the adaptation process. This paper employs field research methods for on-site study, observing and analyzing "Waiting for Godot" performed at the Wuzhen Theatre Festival, and proposing various intercultural adaptation methods. Additionally, this article conducted audience surveys to gather feedback from the viewers' perspective, making the research more comprehensive and in-depth. The innovation of this paper lies in the first-time application of field research methods to the study of drama adaptation, obtaining data from actual performances and audience feedback, which makes the research findings more realistic and practically valuable. Moreover, our proposed concept of preserving the "core" of drama provides a new theoretical perspective and practical direction for future drama adaptation research.

Ukrainian theater as an instrument of cultural diplomacy and its role in modern integration processes

The purpose of the article is to determine the significance of theater art in the cultural diplomacy of Ukraine. The object is the cultural diplomacy. The subject is the role of theater in cultural diplomacy.
 The relevance of this article lies in the need to understand the historical role of the theater in the formation of the identity of various nations It has become quite natural that countries actively use their own dramatic art in presenting themselves to the world community.
 The methodology of the theoretical analysis in this article is based on both the whole complex of ideas related to the object of research and a specific scientific toolkit formed by the morphological and methodological discourse. It is noted that the theater operates within cultural diplomacy in four main ways, each of which implies different expectations of interaction with the target audience. At the first and simplest level, a theatrical performance can simply be a pleasant and interesting gift to the audience; at the second level — a way of forming perception and informing; at the third level, the theatrical performance becomes a mechanism for creating interaction between the source and target groups; and at the fourth level — it can be part of the strategy for the development of art and the creative public sphere in a given country.
 The results. 1. The concept of people-to-people contact is extremely important in cultural diplomacy because it facilitates access to intercultural dialogue, thus allowing people to learn more about each other, other cultures and different ways of life. The advantage in this case is that existing prejudices are overcome in a casual and informal way. In addition, cultural diplomacy and its various projects contribute to openness and tolerance for the development of civil society. 2. Ukrainian cultural diplomacy has some experience of involving theatrical art in the presentation of Ukrainian culture abroad, but in general it can be characterized as sporadic, non-systematic, and ideological. 3. Ukrainian theater faced the task of not only actualizing old and finding new artistic images and symbols, in order to form the proper image of the country, but also to form a certain basis for the effective implementation of the tasks of cultural diplomacy of Ukraine, which is appropriate in relation to the challenges of the time. 4. Over the past decades, the theater festival has become an inseparable component of the artistic life of Ukraine, as well as the cultural diplomacy of our country. Theatrical festivals gained tangible audience sympathy and turned out to be not only an important event in the artistic life of our country, but also realized the understanding of the “brand”, becoming a symbol of quality for connoisseurs.
 The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that the theater can be a diplomatic mechanism for initiating two-way conversation and exchange. The means of implementing this task can vary from promoting the staging of works by foreign theater groups in one’s own country to attracting foreign producers and directors for joint development, to selecting plays with the aim of creating new discussions.
 The practical significance of the article lies in the fact that the scientific analysis allowed us to identify the cultural diplomacy as a type of diplomacy that uses the country’s cultural heritage as a means to achieve its goals: art, in particular theater, cinema, music, literature, and education.

Saudi Arabia’s Jawqat al-Masrah. (Theatre Choir Club)

At the 2022 Sharm El-Sheikh International Theatre Festival for Youth, Saudi women performed in a public square without hijab. Al-Enezī’s al-Sujanāʾ al-ahrār (Free Prisoners) is not only about art and liberty, it enacts it.

Jean-Jacques Lemêtre, or the Man in a State of Flow

"The following article describes the author’s experience during the collaboration (March-July 2023) with the music director of Le Théâtre du Soleil, Jean-Jacques Lemêtre. His activities at the Faculty of Theatre and Film in Cluj, a concert-conference, the workshops with the students and the construction of an “audience course” prepared for the International Theater Festival in Sibiu are presented. Excerpts from students’ opinions about working with J.-J. Lemêtre are also provided. Keywords: Jean-Jacques Lemêtre, theatre music, instruments, theatricality, acting, exercises, rhythm, concoctage, cours de public, entrance, feedback."

The Old and the New in Contemporary Ukrainian Ballet: Performances, Trends, and Prospects

The article by the experts of the Fifth Ukrainian Theater Festival and Award GRA (2023) analyzes six dance performances by theaters in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Kryvyi Rih that premiered in 2019–2022, either before or shortly after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion. Four of these performances were longlisted for the festival in the special category for Best Dance and Physical Theater Performance, and one was longlisted for Best Performance for Young Audiences. Among them are full-length works that continue the traditions of classical ballet at a new stage. At the opposite pole are plastic performances that experiment with music and theater formats. Between these poles, contemporary Ukrainian ballet is trying to rethink its past and find a relevant voice in the polyphony of contemporary Ukrainian culture. The study of these performances has shown that at the present stage in Ukrainian dance theater, the following are of particular importance: 1) the return to the theater repertoire of scores by Ukrainian composers of the twentieth century; 2) the updating of the ballet repertoire of Ukrainian opera houses by commissioning new scores; 3) dance experiments in which the plastic “story” comes to the fore, and the music compilation plays a secondary role; 4) the search for new ways of integration of movement and sound in performances where traditional dance expressiveness is muted as much as possible in favor of artistic synthesis; 5) the dominance of the plastic component in contemporary innovative music and drama performances.