International Theatre Festival Research Articles

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.

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.

Romeo and Juliet, from Page to Stage and Back: A Hands-On Perspective on Functionalism in Drama Translationi

Abstract A decade ago I translated Romeo and Juliet into Romanian for a student performance, which premiered on February 14, 2013 and has since participated in four international theatre festivals. Three years later, having joined the team of the Shakespeare for the New Millennium project – devoted to the retranslation of Shakespeare’s complete works – I embarked on what I thought would be merely a revision of my previous translation for the stage, but soon turned into a very different translatorial experience, which resulted in an entirely new Romanian version, mainly due to the twofold, yet more clearly defined purpose of the translation project. This new version, published in vol. 13 (2018) of the latest scholarly edition of Shakespeare’s complete works (2010-2019), has recently passed the performability test as well, in a compelling stage production which premiered, to great acclaim, on December 17, 2022 at the “Mihai Eminescu” National Theatre in Chișinău (Moldova). Thus, my article sets out to explore – self-reflectively, retrospectively and through the lens of Skopos theory – how in each case my approach to the task in hand, my decisions and my solutions to various translation problems were guided by what I knew or assumed about the aims, requirements and prospective audience of each translation. Thus, a translator’s practical experience is brought to bear on what has been both hailed and criticised as “a new paradigm” in translation studies, in an attempt to test its hypotheses against the actual practice (as well as the outcomes) of translating the same text for different purposes.

Ric Knowles, International Theatre Festivals and Twenty-First-Century Interculturalism

"Ric Knowles, International Theatre Festivals and Twenty-First-Century Interculturalism." Theatre Research in Canada, 44(1), pp. 147–148

Staging International Theatre Festivals in Mid-Pandemic Russia: An Interview with Roman Dolzhanskiy

Roman Dolzhanskiy speaks to James Rowson about the challenges of organising international theatre festivals in Russia during the COVID-19 pandemic and discusses how the New European Theatre (NET) Festival and Territory Festival have navigated the complex and frequently changing public safety restrictions in Russia.

IMPACT, Interculturalism, and the International Theatre Festival Model

Cet article propose une étude de cas du festival IMPACT de Kitchener, en Ontario, pour illustrer ce que permet un tel festival ainsi que les obstacles à surmonter dans l’organisation de festivals de théâtre internationaux au Canada, en particulier ceux qui tentent de promouvoir la négociation et l’échange interculturels. Le texte présente d’abord l’histoire du festival et un aperçu des conditions matérielles de son fonctionnement, y compris le financement, les questions relatives à la traduction, la politique internationale, l’espace, les pratiques professionnelles et les différences culturelles. Ensuite, l’étude s’attarde à l’édition 2019 du festival, où diverses tensions et contraintes ont atteint leur paroxysme, entraînant la démission de la direction artistique et de la présidence du conseil d’administration. L’article prône un modèle d’administration et d’organisation de festival plus flexible, davantage axé sur la communauté et géré par les artistes. Plutôt que de se contenter du modèle qui prévaut au Canada, ce modèle doit permettre les rencontres et les échanges par-delà les différences culturelles. Enfin, l’article insiste sur la nécessité de trouver de nouvelles façons de concevoir des festivals tels qu’IMPACT pour agir comme des médiateurs interculturels, des lieux de négociation et de renégociation de valeurs culturelles, où les artistes et d’autres personnes peuvent se réunir et générer un dialogue vivant et performatif au-delà des différences, qui demeurent néanmoins réelles et respectées.

Имени Чехова. К тридцатилетию Международного театрального фестиваля

The Anton Chekhov International Theatre Festival celebrated its 30th anniversary. The festival was first held in the fall of 1992, and soon became one of world theatre culture’s greatest events. Its audience could see performances by legendary foreign theatres in the country’s main cities. Over the years of the festival’s existence, the spectators have seen over 600 performances from 54 countries. Viewers in Russia had the opportunity to witness the elite of the world stage engaged in the best performances created from recent decades in theatres of Europe, Asia, Africa, and both Americas. And it has been most significant to see that Russian theatre exists within the context of the processes happening in the world’s performing arts. From the first steps of its history, the Chekhov Festival has been organizing the tours of Russian theatre groups around the world. A few years after the Chekhov Festival started, international co-productions, created by Russian and foreign theatres, became a usual venue. Among them there were Oresteia by Peter Stein, Boris Godunov, Twelfth Night and The Tempestby Declan Donnellan. The Chekhov International Festival has an incredibly rich past, with an equally bountiful future awaiting. The basis of modern theatre is in its universality and capacity to unify people, which is the highest goal of theatre art.

The Cage Effect from a Serbian Perspective

John Cage, a key figure and leading exponent of the experimental paradigm in twentieth century music, and in the performing and visual arts, was a reference point for testing the cultural openness of socialist countries during the Cold War. His influence appeared in various forms in Serbian music and art, primarily in the field of extended media, performance art, and musical minimalism. This paper discusses the reception of John Cage’s works in Serbia from the 1970s to the present day, ranging from transpositions and re-mediations of his aesthetic positions and poetic moves, to identification with them. Particular attention is paid to the appropriation of Cage’s concepts of silence, indeterminism, and chance operations, as phenomena highlighting the maturing of receptive views of Cage in Serbian music, in relation to the oeuvres of the composers in the group Opus 4 (Miroslav Savić, Milimir Drašković, Miodrag Lazarov Pashu, and Vladimir Tošić) and Katarina Miljković. Also, Cage’s appearance with the Merce Cunningham Troupe at the Sixth Belgrade International Theatre Festival in 1972 is considered in the context of both cultural connections and the resonances of his impact on the Serbian and Yugoslav art scene.

The Ghost Newspaper: Fake Journalism in the Mexican Drug War

During the 2010s, Tamaulipas, a border state in northern Mexico, became a “silenced zone” for journalism as a result of the Mexican Drug War. In 2016, during an international theatre festival in the port of Tampico, the Stultifera Navis Institutom collective intervened at the headquarters of what used to be one of the most important journals in the city. The building, located in downtown Tampico, had been abandoned for thirty-three years. For three days, we brought the newspaper “back to life,” using only fake news. This essay recovers the experience of this multidisciplinary site-specific intervention by casting a critical look at its theoretical foundation in Jacques Derrida’s concept of “Hauntology” and Georges Didi-Huberman’s method of “Anachronism.” Engaging deontological debates within media practice and the “virtuality” concept in literature, it analyzes the use of fiction as an act of discursive rebellion. Finally, “spectrality” and Aby Warburg’s notion of “images in history” are problematized with a decolonial perspective, concluding with a reflection on the theatrical character of historical resurgences through an analysis of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

More Books - Black Cultural Mythology. By Christel N. Temple. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2020; 370 pp. $95.00 cloth, $33.95 paper, e-book available. - The Cambridge Companion to International Theatre Festivals. Edited by Ric Knowles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020; 368 pp. $84.99 cloth, $24.99 paper, e-book available. - Contemporary European Playwrights. Edited by Maria M. Delgado,

More Books - Black Cultural Mythology. By Christel N. Temple. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2020; 370 pp. $95.00 cloth, $33.95 paper, e-book available. - The Cambridge Companion to International Theatre Festivals. Edited by Ric Knowles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020; 368 pp. $84.99 cloth, $24.99 paper, e-book available. - Contemporary European Playwrights. Edited by Maria M. Delgado,

BITEF Before and After 1989: Representation to Deconstruction of Social and Cultural Paradigms

Ivan Medenica here analyzes the cultural shift that the Belgrade International Theatre Festival (BITEF) experienced after 1989. From its beginnings in the late 1960s until the end of the1980s, BITEF was a representation of the dominant multicultural, modernist, and progressive paradigm of Yugoslavia’s cultural policy. This was not an unambiguous position. On the one hand, modernist values were imposed by Tito’s authoritarian regime and, on the other, they were confronted with the conservative tendencies both in politics and the arts. As a multicultural and progressive platform, BITEF was one of the biggest victims in the field of the arts of Slobodan Milošević’s nationalist regime in the 1990s and the wars in former Yugoslavia. After the fall of Milošević in 2000, a complex period of tension started between the ‘reborn’ urge for democratization and internationalization, on the one hand, and persistent nationalism and conservatism, on the other. Due to its tradition, reinforced artistic ambitions, and international reputation, BITEF regained its fame. Its position today, however, is quite paradoxical. It is an anti-traditionalist and multicultural festival – within a culture and society that are becoming traditional and rather claustrophobic. Ivan Medenica is a Professor of Theatre at the University of the Arts in Belgrade in Serbia and has received the national award for theatre criticism six times. His publications include The Tragedy of Initiation, or the Inconstant Prince: The Classics and Their Masks. Medenica is also the artistic director of BITEF.

O estranhamento do turismo controlado: no áudio tour Remote Buenos Aires do Rimini Protokoll

A hipótese de análise crítica de Remote Buenos Aires do Rimini Protokoll apresentada neste artigo é que o áudio tour, na sua estrutura de deslocamento pela cidade, reproduz o controle do turismo de massas ao invés de produzir uma vivência específica do participante com a cidade e com os outros participantes. A experiência que o áudio tour possibilita aos participantes, na sua dramaturgia, é um estranhamento sobre o comportamento de massa, sobre a relação entre o humano e a máquina, e sobre a teatralidade da vida cotidiana. Falta, entretanto, uma crítica às condicionantes sócio-históricas da produção do espaço da cidade. Ao final da análise, apontamos também para uma contradição do grupo Rimini Protokoll no modo de produção da série Remote X relacionada com a lógica de turismo do circuito de festivais internacionais de teatro.

LIFT and the GLC versus Thatcher: London’s Cultural Battleground in 1981

In 1981 Rose Fenton and Lucy Neal established the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT). While the Festival is generally recognized as having been highly influential in the field of British theatre over the past twenty-five years, it has received little academic attention. In this article Phoebe Patey-Ferguson examines the founding of the event, arguing that the specific socio-political circumstances of its early years gave shape to the innovative form of a city-based international theatre festival. The bureaucratic conflict between Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government and Ken Livingstone’s Greater London Council (GLC) is identified as a central factor in the creation of LIFT, with reference to Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the bureaucratic field and Loïc Wacquant’s development of this model in relation to neoliberal market capitalism. The article is derived from Phoebe Patey-Ferguson’s recently completed PhD on LIFT in its social, cultural, and political context at the Department of Theatre and Performance, Goldsmiths, University of London.1

Europe's Staging – Staging Europe

Europe's Staging – Staging Europe Nicole Haitzinger (bio) and Stella Lange (bio) In the context of contemporary performing arts it should, firstly, be stated that theatre is declared as the venue of negotiation for political and social questions and that, secondly, as a consequence, Europe is staged in specified ways; thematic positing such as negotiations of borders, construction of identities or history that weave between fact and fiction are worth mentioning here. It is no coincidence that models of theatre resonate with contemporary playwriting and staging practices where theatre and politics have been articulated explicitly or alternative models of society have been designed. They carry, among others, documentary, historical, commemorative, and utopian features. Transitions from reality to fiction appear blurred, concealed or seemingly defini ve. In some cases, contemporary playwriting and staging procedures refer explicitly to historical European theatrical forms such as the Attic tragedy and frequently to the tragic or mournful. This "(dis)course on Europe" tested in specific European Countries and particularly at international theatre festivals over the past few years faces, with exceptions, however, a hitherto virtually undifferentiated state of research. The relevance of the topic can also be tracked in a series of recent conferences, newly founded journals, and associations, as well as prominent writers and artists who proclaim their manifestos on theatre and Europe in an avant-garde manner. This edition focuses on those theatrical works that thematically discuss "Europe" and its social, political, economic, and cultural questions through a comparative, transnational, or decolonial perspective oriented towards performance analysis. Particular attention is paid to narrative, structural, and aesthetic strategies as well as alterations that the text is subjected to right up to the production and performance on stage. Both aspects should, thus, be taken into account: the relative source text and the theatrical event. More specifically, it begs the question whether theatrical structures, staging practices, and aesthetic parameters initiate a historical reflection on Europe in the context of theatre. With regard to the inquiry of a European or cosmopolitical society, the additional question arises which homogenous or heterogeneous forms of representation can be found for the individual, the group, or community within the theatre and how traditional theatre forms, most notably tragedy, are revisited and undergo a revaluation and update. Thisis, notleast, becausethechoiceof genre, resources, imagery used, and, finally, theatre aesthetics and implication is subject to specific teleological narratives or societal processes of inclusion and exclusion. Europe's Staging: Three Trends in Contemporary Theatre In contemporary theatre, the staging of Europe is to be situated in the complex constellations of politics and aesthetics. If theatre is defined as a practice distinguishable from politics – and we think that in the perspective of theatre, literary studies, and the recognition of numerous historical resonances in the dispositive of a Europeanoriented contemporary theatre, it is imperative in the widest sense – then various trends can be differentiated. We would like to [End Page 125] introduce three trends briefly that can neither be classified in distinct categories of political or agitational theatre, nor can they be identified with the assertion that in theatre every position, posture, or action/movement is political per se. (1) Documentary and Investigative Theatre, Documentality, and Forms of Documented Unreliability It is not surprising that the contemporary staging of Europe starts with a revision of documents and their function within different theatrical narratives. The archive of Europe has been grown in size since 1990 and been challenged with transnational narratives and documents from non-European countries – of course not only since the increasing migration to Europe at the end of the 20th century. Furthermore, the constitution of the archive has changed with the cultural turn that strives to give attention to objects beyond the written paper when thinking only of oral and performative history or the inscription in a global and digital world. Eventually, with the reprise of the new 'real' or 'reality' in all arts, documents have become the prioritized reference point. Some producers refer to the genre of 'documentary theatre' claiming specifically the reference to lived 'reality' and 'truth'. Others return to documentary theatre and its last remaining witnesses in order to rewrite national history in a transnational European History. However, as Hito Steyerl...

Theater Festivals - a Collective Archive

Abstract Theatre can also be viewed as a collective archive that we go to when we need to better understand the world around us, artistic movements and trends, the state of mankind. Each participant in a theatrical act, whether spectator or creator, loads it with emotions and, therefore, with memories. Theatre, in all its forms, strengthens communities, and theatre festivals are a very good opportunity to popularize theatrical productions, from the level of some small communities, to the macro level. Diversity is an essential ingredient for stimulating imagination and a better understanding of an area of interest. This is why a theatre festival with international coverage, such as the International Theatre Festival for Young Audiences in Iasi (FITPTI), should make for its audience as many referrals as possible to the context and artistic life of a community as a whole. In order to achieve such an objective, in addition to the scenic representations, theatrical exhibitions, book launches, interactive installations, theatrical critique seminars, residences for young playwrights, reading shows are more than necessary. If we refer to the collective memory enriched by theatre, we could say that theatre shows have a short life. But, most of the times, those that really have a major impact and their creators are also found in books. And, it is known, books have a much longer life. FITPTI organizers understood this from the beginning and gave the theatre book an important place in the event.

Introduction: Festivals

In Canada, as elsewhere, “the festivalization of culture” proceeds apace (Bennett et al). Even setting aside the ubiquitous music, film, and cultural festivals that have sprung up like mushrooms—not to mention mushroom festivals themselves (such as the “Fungus Among Us” Festival in Whistler, B.C.)—from the Sound Symposium in St. John’s to the Victoria Fringe Festival, and from the Island Unplugged festival on Pelee Island (Canada’s southernmost point) to the Alianait Arts Festival in Iqaluit, Nunavut, festivals dot the theatre and performance landscape in the land now called Canada. Across the country they turn small towns into tourist destinations and urban centres into “festival cities” (see Johannson, Thomasson). In editing the Cambridge Companion to International Theatre Festivals I compiled a list of over forty international theatre, performance, and multi-arts festivals in Canada, a list that does not include music or sound, circus or visual arts festivals, nor does it include the various Shakespeare festivals (from the “Shakespeare by the Sea” festivals on the east coast to Bard on the Beach in BC), the big repertory seasons at Stratford and Niagara-on-the-Lake, or the many festivals such as the peripatetic Magnetic North that have no international component. In addition to all of these, there are twenty-one Canadian members of the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals (along with nine U.S.-based members), not including other “rogue” fringes.

“Listen, Imagine, and Provoke”: An Interview with Kris Nelson

Kris Nelson discusses his career as an arts presenter and agent in Canada and his move to Ireland to be artistic director of the Dublin Fringe Festival in 2013, and his current work as artistic director of the London International Theatre Festival, LIFT, (UK). Nelson emphasises the importance of attuning oneself to their local environment when moving abroad and being an artist-lead curator in programming, presenting, and producing work in theatre and performance festivals.

Carmelo Bene, Tamerlano e la Biennale impossibile

In January 1988, against all odds, Carmelo Bene was appointed artistic director of Venice Biennale’s International Theatre Festival. The nomination was meant to last four years (1989-1992), but it abruptly ended after only two, with the resignation of Bene himself because of endless controversies with the board. The only notable accomplishment of Biennale’s Theatre section was a multidisciplinary workshop on Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlain the Great, held on September 1989 under the title La ricerca impossibile ovvero il teatro senza spettacolo. The workshop involved musicians, singers and actors from Italy, France and Belgium. In order to understand that project from an historical and critical perspective, this paper is divided in two parts. The first one aims at retracing the sequence of events surrounding Bene’s appointment and resignation as artistic director. The second one tries to analyse the reasons that led the Italian actor to choose Tamburlaine the Great as his field of research on the concept of “macchina attoriale”. The investigation is founded on his own theoretical premises as expressed in his work La voce di Narciso. Finally, we provide probable reasons for the predictable failure of that impossible workshop.

Творчо-організаційні принципи діяльності Міжнародного театрального фестивалю «Мельпомена Таврії»

The article refers to the creative and organizational aspects of one of the leading and oldest festivals in Ukraine — the International Theatre Festival «Melpomena Tavrii». Analytical study is applied to sociocultural function of the festival, stats of geography of the participants, organization of jury’s work and contest results. The main focus is on analysis of nominating and repertoire policies of «Melpomena Tavrii».

Erratum: “Performing and Conforming: A Critical Analysis of Iran’s Fadjr International Theatre Festival” by Marjan Moosavi; T229 TDR 60:1

Erratum: “Performing and Conforming: A Critical Analysis of Iran’s Fadjr International Theatre Festival” by Marjan Moosavi; T229 TDR 60:1