by Lala Panait The situation of Italian cultural institutions became more and more troubled after 2010 when the Italian Theatres’ Association was dissolved by the Minister of Economy and Finance, Giulio Tremonti. On top of that, the budget for cultural activities shrunk down to 0.3 % of the state’s overall budget, which determined the creation of the Zero Point Three (0.3) movement: they started to organize flash-mobs in prominent theaters and protest against the Government’s decisions. Another issue of public outcry came with the Water Referendum, through which the Government tried to privatize water resources. As a reaction to these…
by Lala Panait The situation of Italian cultural institutions became more and more troubled after 2010 when the Italian Theatres’ Association was dissolved by the Minister of Economy and Finance, Giulio Tremonti. On top of that, the budget for cultural activities shrunk down to 0.3 % of the state’s overall budget, which determined the creation of the Zero Point Three (0.3) movement: they started to organize flash-mobs in prominent theaters and protest against the Government’s decisions. Another issue of public outcry came with the Water Referendum, through which the Government tried to privatize water resources. As a reaction to these…
Erwin Piscator (1893-1966), theatre director and political theoretician, initiator of the political theatre. In Berlin, Piscator founded the Proletarian Theatre (1920), Central theatre (1924) and Piscator Bühne (1927-1929). In 1934, he emigrated to the U.S.S.R. , then to France and United States. He returned to Germany after the second world war and was in charge of Freie Volksbühne (1962-1966). Naturalism and the people’s stage are the underlying principles of the proletarian theatre theorized by Erwin Piscator in his work, Political Theatre. The establishment of the Volksbühne theatre constituted a radical rupture with the bourgeois theatre which emphasized aestheticism, grandeur in…
by Costi Rogozanu Why would I go to the theatre? Why would I go out for “art consumption”? Certainly not to look for something “nice” or to change the scenery for a while. The need for bourgeois catharsis can be easily fulfilled at home by downloading texts, films and music online. No. I only go out to a performance for its message. I only go out when I feel that the artists are “my guys”, that they’d like to get together and break some windows (metaphorically, since I’m no longer that age, unfortunately). I don’t even go out to socialize,…
The documentary theatre performance Clear History, directed by Nicoleta Esinencu , starring Veaceslav Sambriş, Doriana Talmazan, Irina Vacarciuc and produced by Teatru-Spălătorie (Theatre-Washroom) brings into the public sphere a theme willfully ignored both by the authorities and the media from the Republic of Moldova, namely the contribution of the Romanian administration and army to the ghettoization, deportation and extermination of the Jewish population from Bessarabia, Bukovina, Trans-dniestr (Priednistrovia) and Odessa during 1941-1944, when these territories were under Romanian administration or occupation. The current coalition government in the Republic of Moldova has adopted a radical pro-Romanian, pro-Western stance as its pseudo-political…
Faisal Abu Al-Heja is a 23 year-old actor and political activist. He was born in the refugee camp in Jenin, Palestine. He graduated from the Acting School of the Freedom Theatre and took part in most of the projects of the theatre in recent years: Animal Farm (Ferma Animalelor), Sho Kman? (What else?), Playback Theatre, Freedom Bus etc. Freedom Theatre defines itself as “a community theatre and cultural centre in the refugee camp in Jenin, Occupied Palestine.” Starting from the belief that arts can play an essential role in the construction of a free and healthy society, Freedom Theatre offers…
by Vlad Petri The protests that took place in Bucharest in January 2012 led to discussions on the role of street protests and problematized the relation between the authorities, the protesters and those documenting the events. The article Visual Representations of the 2012 Protests. Whose Side Are You On? tackles several issues: the partitioning of the physical space of protest, the existence of a “supervised protest”, authorized by law enforcement institutions, the representations of protesters in the media, the construction of a fictitious context of the protest different from the one on the scene, the meaning of the perspective one…