HOME AND ABROAD

International Theatre Symposium of “Festivals in Transition” European Theatre Network (F.I.T.)

More: www.theatre-fit.org

Themes
We would like to approach the question of traveling (intercultural work in the theatre) as an inspirational tool for the creation of theatre – from the point of view of artists and festival programmers.

Traveling always sounds like a great idea, but everyone knows that it can also produce a number of challenging or difficult experiences. Is contemporary theatre and dance theatre a big travel agency… or is there a real need for exchange? What are we gaining by “running away from home”? The symposium will focus on the basic question: Why do we travel?

Traveling as a programmer: How do I travel, how do I look at the world, at the artists in foreign countries as a festival programmer, how do I put a filter on reality in another way as a tourist to what kind of information am I open, to what kind not, how open am I to grasp at least a little bit of the context that artists in other countries work in. Are we caught by the – old? - myth of the exploration of the unknown?

Traveling as an artist: Who travels to experience the world in order to gather material for his work, to collaborate with other artists, to perform to earn money?

Form

We would like to invite people to talk about their passports and all the stamps and visas they have in them; to bring us their “tourist” images, or use objects from a trip as a starting point to tell us a story about their worst and their most illuminating experience abroad; what items do they always pack to take on their trip … What is their favourite airline?… what happened as a result of their trip? What reflections did it provoke? How did it affect their professional work? How did it affect their personal lives?

Participants

FIT Network representatives of international theatre festivals, other theatre and dance professionals. From the Czech Republic: Tomaš Žižka – mamapapa organization; Pavel Štorek – Four Days Association; Phillipp Schenker and Daniela Voračková – Stage Code Company; Lenka Flory - Deja Donne Company, Yvona Kreuzmannová – Tanec Praha / Ponec Theatre and others.

Moderated by
Rose Fenton /Great Britain/

F.I.T. is an initiative of the international theatre festivals Homo Novus (Riga, Latvia), Divadelna Nitra (Nitra, Slovakia), Sirenos (Vilnius, Lithuania), Spielart (Munich, Germany), Krakowskie Reminiscencje Teatralne (Krakow, Poland), Four Days Association /Festival (Prague, the Czech Republic), Exodos (Ljubljana, Slovenia) and Baltoscandal (Rakvere, Estonia).

F.I.T. is supported by the Culture 2000 program of the European Union, the Allianz Cultural Foundation, the Goethe Institute, the Cultural Department of the City of Munich, and other national, regional and local institutions.