The Varna Summer Theatre Festival as a space for exchange of ideas and reflection
This year’s edition includes international educational initiatives, meetings and an academic conference.
The 31st edition of the Varna Summer International Theatre Festival opens on 1 June. Its artistic programme presents to the broad audience 27 productions from Bulgaria, Europe and the USA . Traditionally, the festival fulfils its mission to also create a working space for theatre professionals from the country and the world. This year it resumes the “Showcase” programme, which it initiated back in 2008 together with the Art Office Foundation. Invited festival selectors and theatre professionals from France, Greece, Lithuania, Turkey, Romania, Korea and Israel will be introduced to outstanding performances from the Bulgarian stage, presented with English translation. Special guest of the festival is the popular French playwright, director and actress Salomé Lelouch, whose play “You Shoulnd’t Have Said So!” director Javor Gardev staged for the first time in Bulgaria. A day after the performance, on 5th June at 4 pm in the Drama Theatre (foyer I balcony) the audience will be able to meet the author and the director for a conversation.
On the initiative of the Homo Ludens Foundation, the festival is hosting for the second time between 5 and 8 June a workshop for young theatre critics, organised by the International Association of Theatre Critics. Under the guidance of the renowned theatre critics Jean-Pierre Hahn (France) and Ivan Medenica (Serbia), its participants from different countries will get acquainted with Bulgarian theatre and develop their skills in writing original critical texts. New trends in performance analysis is the topic of the open lecture by the distinguished French theatre scholar prof. Patrice Pavis. It will take place on 8 June at 16:15 in the Festival and Congress Centre, Press Centre.
This year, the festival is also hosting the international conference “Rethinking the theatre heritage from the time of communism”, again organized by the Homo Ludens Foundation. Researchers from Germany, Canada, Poland, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria will take part in the conference and will present their perspective on the question of how the histories of the arts in the period 1945-1989 in Eastern Europe, and theatre in particular, are written/recounted. The conference will take place on 4 and 5 June at 10:00 a.m. in the Festival and Congress Centre, Press Centre, with working languages English and Bulgarian.
Follow the programme on viafest.org and on our Facebook profile https://www.facebook.com/varnasummerfestival.
The Varna Summer International Theatre Festival 2023 is organized by the Via Fest Foundation with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture, the Municipality of Varna through the Culture Fund, the National Culture Fund and the First Investment Bank. Partners of the festival are Art Office Foundation and Homo Ludens Foundation. The festival is hosted by TMPC – Varna / Stoyan Bachvarov Theatre, State Puppet Theatre – Varna, Festival and Congress Centre – Varna, Boris Georgiev City Art Gallery, Rebunkers Cultural Centre and the Archaeological Museum.