NETA Programme

The International NETA Theatre Festival will include a series of Round Table events. Please find the schedule here-below. 

Sunday, 30 August 2015, 11:00 am, Media Hall  

Round table: Theatre and the ethics of being present

Hosted by: George Banu, essayst, theatre critic, honorary President of IATC, Paris, France

Argument: The show or the fulfilled moment – this is when yesterday’s words and today’s feelings merge. This is today’s ethics that confers dignity to a theatre hall and glow to the act. The present’s ethics is the pedestal on which the love for theatre stands. It involves the act in itself but also its opening to the world to ensure an outspoken and restless dialogue. The present’s ethics is an ethics of here and now responsibility.

Today, theatre does not have the means and the shock power of the great majority media forces. Although it pertains to a minority, theatre stands out like an act of resistance and non-surrender. In this respect, theatre takes on a heroic vocation. It justifies itself through its ability of refusing to accept the real without examining it, without confronting the world like a modern David,”a hero of our times”.

Participants: Radu Penciulescu (director, Sweden), Margarita Mladenova (playwright and director, Bulgaria), Stefan Ivanov (poet, playwright, Bulgaria), Felix Alexa (director, Romania).

George Banu – essay-writer and professor dealing with the European theatre life. President of honor of the International Association of Theatre Critics, head of the magazine Alternatives théâtrales and of the series Le temps du théâtre, Actes Sud publishing house. He has recently published Love and Lack of Love for Theatre, The Monologues of Unfulfillment, The Personal Paris or The House with Gifts. George Banu received the 2015 French Academy Great Award and is doctor honoris causa of several universities.

Language: French and Romanian
Simultaneous translation into English (headsets)
Free entrance

Tuesday, 1 September 2015, 10:00 am, Media Hall  

10.00-11.45: European theatre – art in the center of civil life

Hosted by: Trevor Davies* Founder of Copenhagen International Theatre (CIT) and director of more than 50 international performing arts festivals and Anca Ioniță**, Coordination Bureau Bucharest 2021, theatre critic

11.45-12.00: Coffee break

12.00-12.50: Video – projection about the recent Refurbishment of the NTB Building, presented by Mihai Bodea (50 min.)

Argument: The role of the theatre to mirror society and to reflect on contemporary society is a key element to keeping theatre alive.

With increased marginalized communities in our European cities, in social ethnic and religious terms, with issues of protecting European borders and nurturing a common, sustainable European model, the search for alternatives is in full bloom and is in many ways crisis generated.

Arts practice is changing radically and European artists are testing formats, methods and staging concepts to open up process, presentation and contexts. From closed laboratories, theatres are becoming open workshops and we believe this trend will not only continue, yet in fact increase.

Microtopias, one of the three themes of the Bucharest’s candidacy to the title of European Capitals of Culture in 2021 addresses these issues from the perspective of arts seen as a civil force engaged in the shaping of the future society.

Theatre as a microtopia is an open platform activating in the very centre of civil life – a place to formulate, create and test alternatives. It is also an alternative to the political and media dominated discourse.

Trevor Davies will make a short presentation of examples of this theme from selected European theatres, as a starting point for reflection on theatre’s role in local and European society from the perspective of arts engaged in the civil society.

Participants: Theatre and festival manager: Hervin Culi (NT Tirana, Albania), Janko Ljumovic (NT Podgorica, Muntenegro), Anastas Popdimitrov (Drama and Puppets Theatre Vratsa, Bulgaria), Eric Vigner (Theatre de Lorient, France), Petru Hadarca (NT Chisinau, R.Moldova), Damir Domitrovic (Director EXPonto Festival, Ljubljana), Dio Kangelari (Festival of Athens).

From Romania: Ion Caramitru (NT « I.L. Caragiale » Bucharest, Constantin Chiriac (director FITS, Sibiu), Mihaela Michailov (playwright), other theatre managers from Bucharest.

*Trevor Davies is 65 and has a British / German background. He was educated as a Town Planner in Nottingham School of Town and Country Planning in 1972.

TD relocated to Denmark in 1974 and has created / managed six major cultural institutions, including the first user driven cultural centre in Denmark, Huset, Aarhus; Copenhagen International Theatre 1980 which he still co-directs with Katrien Verwilt, Kanonhallen Theatre 1990, the major venue for international and experimental theatre Copenhagen, The Danish Centre for Culture and Development under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1998, The New Writing Center, Norwich UK 2004.

One major focus of his career has been festivals: Davies has directed/co-directed more than 50 international performing arts / city festivals e.g. CIT’s annual festivals 1980-2014, The Aarhus Festival 1985-1990, Salisbury Arts Festival UK 2000-2004.

Another major focus has been on the relationship between culture and the city. He was director of Copenhagen European Cultural Capital of Europe 1996 (1992-97) and he was also the director of Aarhus 2017 successful bid as European Capital of Culture (2008-2013). He advised other cities including Stavanger 2008, Helsinki 2000, and is now advisor for Sofia and Bucharest 2021 on cultural policy/ECoC.

From 1997-2000 he was chair of the National Danish Fund for Culture. In 2008-2010 has advised The Danish Arts Council and Nordic Parliament on issues of cultural diversity. .

CITs current project is the biennale Metropolis 2007-2017, focusing on arts in the urban context, and via this project TD initiated urban cultural programs e.g. Light / Sound funded by the EU Social Fund 2008-10 and a Nordic Platform for Cultural Planning I 2014.

Davies has been knighted by The Danish Queen in 1986 and 1997 and has received a number of Danish awards for his work. He is active as speaker and moderator on subjects including; arts management, city arts/urban policy, cultural diversity, festivals and cultural events as drivers of social / cultural change.

**Anca Ioniţă is a Ph.D. Lecturer at Bucharest National University of Theatre and Film “I.L. Caragiale” (UNATC Bucuresti), Theatre Studies Department – the MA program for actors, directors and stage designers. She teaches several courses, among which: Theories of Drama, Introduction into Performance Studies and Analysis of the Theatrical Creative Process. She holds a MFA and PhD degree from UNATC Bucuresti in Theatre Studies along with a BS from Bucharest National Polytechnics University.

During her journalistic career, she developed outstanding roles as a theatre critic, editor and publisher of several magazines amongst which Time Out Bucuresti between 2005 – 2010. She currently is a freelance contributor for theatre quarterly Scena.ro and several film publications.

In cooperation with ARCUB

Languages: Romanian, English.
Simultaneous translation (headsets)
Free entrance

Wednesday, 2 September 2015, 11:00 am, Media Hall   

Round table: Balkan drama facing a controversial reality

Hosted by Doina Papp*, theatre critic, Romania and Dominique Dolmieu** theatre director, editor, France

Argument: What Drama Tell Us About the Balkan Turmoil

When he set up in 1992 the Festival of the European Theatres Union, Georgio Strehler placed on the festival’s poster the still valid logo: Europe in harmony but not in unison. At that time, the club of the member countries was small and exclusive and its expansion thoughts did not aim too far. The East, that had just freed itself from Communism, was dreaming of democracy but did not quite know how to find its way. As theatre has always been in the avant-garde, it was also from here, from the Balkans where the powder keg was so many times ignited, that the stage announced its support.

A few names of young and clairvoyant playwrights like Biljana Srbljanovici, Milena Marcovic, Hristo Boicev, Dejan Dukovski, Milan Gavran, Stefan Capaliku put their talent in the service of the idea of Eurocentrism, which became vital in an effervescent world that started to re-organize itself.

In the year of grace 2015 that we are in, the brand of both the Balkans and of Balkanism, a brand which some hate so much but others are mad about, cannot be overlooked, no matter how globalized we are. Or perhaps not completely.

Therefore, to what extent, on the cultural level, this fruitful space that also includes Greece of the ancient Classicism, can assert its identity in a Europe that claims diversity, but we wonder if it really honours it?

How is drama getting involved in this exchange of values that eventually justifies, on an ideatic level, democracy itself in the present European construction?

The round table discussions, hosted by the NETA Festival in Bucharest, place themselves in this context, aspiring to create new platforms of dialogue and cooperation. D.P.

Participants: Cristian Theodor Popescu (director), Radu Macrinici (author, director of the ATELIER Festival in Sf. Gheorghe), Marius Manole (actor).

*Doina Papp – jurnalist, theatre critic and historian, IATC member, a Radiorama scenarist, author of – among others – recently issued volumes: De la cortina de fier la teatrul fără perdea / From the Iron Curtain to the Brazen Theatre (2nd edition, the Romanian Academy Editing House) and A Story With Horatio (2nd edition, ALL Editing House).

She writes theatre reviews for Revista 22, Teatrul azi, Scena.ro, Adevărul.ro. She founded and led the Brăila - European Theatre Festival (Europe via the Balkans) undertaking the publication of the anthology Dramaturgie din Balcani / Playwrighting in the Balkans in the series issued by the Teatrul azi magazine.

** Such a passionate lover of the East-European theatrical area he covers by foot or by thought from the Adriatic to the Caucasus, Dominique Dolmieu is co-founder of the Maison d’Europe et d’Orient Centre (MEO), located in Paris, the European Pole for Culture, coordinator of L’Espace d’un instant Publishing House, director at Théâtre national de Syldavie, where they read or stage the edited plays, coordinator of the translating program Eurodram.

Initially known for his activity of promoting theatre in the Balkans through translations, performances, and also by organizing residencies at the Parisian Centre, D.D. is the promoter of theatre-culture programs all over the world, which make possible the dialogue between great cultures and unprivileged ones, as creations belonging to cultural areas of less widely spoken languages are commonly named. By the linguistic and the translators’ commitees network he created, functioning through volunteering, D.D. has conferred the MEO dynamism and a true opening to what is new. The recent login to the Eurodram translation network has led to a larger span of translation activities which now include other multi-linguistically interconnected European countries.

Languages: Romanian, French
Simultaneous translation into English (headsets)
Free entrance