Reflections on a range of socio-political issues are within the gene pool of the International Festival Divadelná Nitra. They appear in different forms within the Festival programme.
The aim of the programming is to draw attention to these issues, highlight them and thus convey them clearly to the public.
The focus of the Festival management and team is reflected in the choice of issues, that gives it a distinct ideological direction. Principally, the themes reflect the existential sense of the contemporaries -artists and others engaged in culture.
Individual Festival editions thus highlight such themes as the quest for identity, reconciliation with the past, visions of the future, issues of immigration, integration, poverty, environmental protection, or, in general, depreciation of values.
The leitmotif of each Festival edition, that varies from year to year, is thus a symbolic indicator of the overarching theme of an annual edition, whilst also serving as the common denominator of the themes of individual performative works.
At the same time, the leitmotif is an incentive to search for content or conceptual connections, links between individual components or works within the Festival programme.
The leitmotif is an inspiration for visual solutions, an incentive to play with the meanings of the term.
Imaginary map, a network of mental and communication links is thus created, and the idea is fulfilled of the Festival as a platform for cultural exchange and the advancement of critical thinking.
The theme of the 2022 International Theatre Festival Divadelná Nitra:
f r a g i l i t y
“Fragility is a material property related to the deformation response to loading. Fragile material breaks when deformed and impacted. The opposite of fragility is tenacity.”
- fragility as an expression of existential sense of threat – to man, nature, values
- fragility as vulnerability – of man, child, animal, tree, feeling, moment.
It encompasses a concern, signals care, empathy. A pole of femininity. Tenderness. Something that is missing in this world.
- fragility as the counter-pole to insolence, violence, militancy
- fragility as an allusion to the opposite of strength.
- fragility as imperfection (or also a disorder, defect, error), as the opposite of the stated and false perfection.
It is what happened to us, what we experienced with the pandemic. In theatre, too, we draw from an error, mistaken decision of the character. Fragility, weakness, vulnerability, imperfection …
- fragile relationships • fragile being • human – fragile jar • frailty of the aged • fragile plant • fragile beauty • fragile balance • fragile identity • fragile peace • fragility and finite nature of life
Unbelievable fragility of being