Selected students from the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava (10) and the Academy of Art in Banská Bystrica (5) will attend 10 performances in the main programme over the course of the six days of the festival. They will participate in meetings with mentors Ján Šimko and Dáša Čiripová – the members of the foreign part of the festival’s Artistic Board – and address these productions in a deeper manner. Along with the mentors, they will pursue analyses of the dramatic text and production, engage in discussion with creators and actors at morning Artists Talks…
In the course of their stay, they will meet theatre scholars, critics and foreign theatre-makers, allowing them to gain a deeper sense of the tendencies and dramatic practices current in world theatre. Visiting students will also attend a joint meeting with the participants ofthe V4 Residency Project, which will once again oÇ er an interesting perspective on the staged works and their refl ection.
How To Understand Theatre in Nitra with the International Theatre Festival Divadelná Nitra
The 27th festival year marks the 11th consecutive year of our activities in audience education. Following the spring section, where students were allowed to see the creative process of the production of A Clockwork Orange at the Andrej Bagar Theatre in Nitra, discussions with creators, scholars and workshops will focus on one production from the main programme of the International Theatre Festival Divadelná Nitra 2018, Hungarian Acacia. Besides analysing the text, students will also deal with the concept of engaged theatre, the topic of personal vs. political and issues of personal engagement. To what extent should art REact to the current political situation? Is there any good reason why it should do so? The How To Understand Theatre Project attempts to create ways toward the understanding of theatre and its various forms in the context of contemporary, especially European dramatic practice. Individual activities encourage participants to reflect on the necessity of theatre and art in general for the development of society, inspire and motivate young people to explore the impacts of theatre on society at large and uncover impulses for change.
Mentors of the How To Understand Theatre 2018 Project:
Dáša Čiripová – theatre scholar and dramaturge. Graduated in theatre studies at the Academy of Performing Arts and in Latin at the Philosophical Faculty of the Comenius University in Bratislava. She has worked at the Slovak Film Institute, the Theatre Institute, the Goethe Institute in Bratislava. She is currently active as a lecturer at the Academy of Performing Arts and as senior researcher at the Institute of Film and Theatre Research of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. For the past four years, she has been a member of the Artistic Board of the International Theatre Festival Divadelná Nitra. In 2016, she curated the Slovak programme section.
Ján Šimko – theatre scholar, dramaturge, playwright and director. Graduated in theatre studies at the Academy of Performing Arts and in psychology at the Comenius University in Bratislava. In 2007 – 2009, he was artistic director of Studio 12 in Bratislava; in 2009 – 2014, he was chief dramaturge of the Literature-Drama Centre of the Slovak Radio, where he remains active as a dramaturge. Since 2004, he is a member of the Artistic Board of the International Theatre Festival Divadelná Nitra. As a curator, he collaborated on two projects prepared by Association Divadelná Nitra: middentity – identify.middle.eu (2007) and Parallel Lives – 20th Century Through the Eyes of the Secret Police (2011 – 2013). In his productions Petržalka Stories (2007), The Final Historic Task of the Young Generation (2009), Plzeň 1953: Just For Today (2015) and This Is Our Home (2017), he develops the methods of documentary theatre and works with oral histories and authentic testimonies.