The 8th Madách International Theatre Meeting (MITEM) opens on 20 April with a production of Hamlet by the Hungarian State Theatre of Cluj. Alongside Hungarian performances, the festival, which runs until 8 May, will feature 16 productions from France, Italy, Greece, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Vietnam.
At the press conference of the theatre meeting in Budapest, Minister of State for Culture Péter Fekete underlined that culture has the potential to be the engine for re-launching life from a downward spiral of a pandemic period.
Fekete pointed out that next year MITEM will be part of the Theatre Olympics. “We are capable of hosting not only Europe, not only the neighbouring countries, but the whole world in Hungary,” he stressed.
CEO of the National Theatre Attila Vidnyánszky said about this year’s MITEM programme: old friends, great masters, including Valère Novarina, Theodoros Terzopulos, Rimas Tuminas, Alvis Hermanis, and new artists will also appear in this year’s programme, which for the first time includes Vietnamese and Bosnian performances as well. He highlighted that Italian director Alessandro Serra, who represents an innovative experimental theatrical language, will also participate in the festival with his production Macbettu.
“We have always thought that we have to open up the theatre and compete on an international level,” Vidnyányszky said, and added that the opportunity to host the Theatre Olympics is a reward for the work of the past decade. This year’s MITEM can be considered the dress rehearsal of the Theatre Olympics, so in preparation for it, further openings and genre expansion are planned, with puppetry and dance being given a special place in the programme alongside circus arts.
He pointed out that the A O Show, a circus production from Vietnam will be performed six times between 5 and 8 May, organised by the Budapest Circus. The Czech puppet theatre Drak comes to the festival with Georges Mélies’ Last Trick, a series of non-verbal magic tricks. The programme will also include dance with a performance of Clown Wanted, directed by Yvette Bozsik and based on the play by Matei Visniec.
This year’s meeting will also feature Valère Novarina’s The Game of Shadows. The Vakhtangov State Theatre in Moscow and the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St Petersburg return to MITEM as well. The Vakhtangov Theatre will perform War and Peace, directed by Rimas Tuminas, and the St Petersburg company will present Today 2016–…, directed by Valery Fokin.
The New Riga Theatre and director Alvis Hermanis will participate with an adaptation of the novel Oblomov, and the Attis Theatre of Athens will return with Cupid, directed by Theodoros Terzopulos.
The Vilnius-based theatre of Lithuanian director Oskaras Korsunovas is presented for the first time at the festival: Viripayev’s The Delhi Dance will be performed, while the Witkacy Theatre in Zakopane will stage Stanislaw Witkiewicz’s The Metaphysics of a Two-Headed Calf. The Ivan Franko National Drama Theatre returns from Kiev with a production of Sing, Lola, Sing!, based on Heinrich Mann’s novel Professor Unrath and the film The Blue Angel.
A production directed by Agata Duda-Gratz that debuted at the Klaipėda Drama Theatre in Lithuania will also be performed, as well as the performance Do You Remember Doli Bel? directed by Kokan Mladenovic at the Chamber Theater 55 in Sarajevo.
The series of programmes which opens with Gábor Tompa’s Hamlet will be closed with a dance performance entitled Kaleidoscope—Hommage á Béla Bartók.
