Press releases

MOGILEV, 14 January (BelTA) - Theaters from nine countries will take part in the International Youth Theater Festival M@rt. kontakt in Mogilev on 21-27 March, Valery Malashko, Deputy Chairman of the Mogilev Oblast Executive Committee, chairman of the organizing committee of the festival, told a press conference, BelTA has learnt.

Over the eight years since its founding the festival has become one of the most important and anticipated cultural events not only in Mogilev but also in Belarus. Over the years, the Mogilev audience has seen 105 performances staged by theaters from 13 countries. This year the festival will welcome new participants from the United Kingdom and Italy. It will also feature theaters from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Bulgaria, and Germany.

According to Andrei Novikov, the director of the Mogilev regional drama theater, this year the festival will not back down from its traditions: as always it is meant for young people and is about the youth. For the past two or three years, the emphasis was on modern drama, on experiment. This year the festival will highlight foreign and Belarusian classics, though in the unconventional interpretation. The festival will show a lot of interesting, profound, philosophical productions, including by prominent directors, which engage a lot of young talented artists.

Theater lovers will enjoy different-genre performances: street theater, research and experimental theater, solo performances, musical and plastic productions. The State Small Theater of Vilnius will present its famous production Mistras based on the play by Lithuania’s most talented contemporary playwright Marius Ivaskavicus. This play attempts to answer the question of who we are. Ivaskavicus plays with myths, makes fiction based on historical facts. His characters on stage look caricatural but not as much as not to sympathize with them. The performance in Mogilev will be shown in Lithuanian, but for the viewers to be able to get a full picture of what is happening, simultaneous interpretation will be offered, which will happen for the first time in the history of the festival.

The jury panel will be international consisting of representatives of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Moldova, Poland, and Germany. As always the jury will work hard as they will need to see two or three plays every day. The performances will be staged on four venues. This year there will be the fifth one in the culture palace. But this will not be a traditional auditorium but a stage-tablet, a brand new space that suggests broader interactivity.

Traditionally the festival will offer an extensive special program. It will include daily press conferences and discussions with the participation of the jury members and critics, roundtables and a workshop of young directors. A series of master classes will be held under the auspices of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw.