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We would like to welcome you to the 1st International Street Theatre Festival.
This Festival is the fruit of a hard and consistent effort, which started back in 1987. From then till now, there were times we were balancing on stilts trying to see far away, times we were walking on a tight rope above a chimera, and times we were passing through fiery wreaths of brutal reality, struggling with ourselves, or playing blind man’s buff in a dream, looking for something that we barely knew.
Theatre on the streets, theatre within a city. At the beginning, our interest was to create a theatre. And we did. When we were evicted from the building at the corner of Mitropoleos and Christopoulou str. we were not unprepared. Our group had already staged three street performances. In front of our eyes a stage without borders was rising.
The tragic irony was that the theatre we created then, the “Magical Theatre”, and its beauty, chased us for a long time. The fact that we hadn’t been able to replace it with a space of equal beauty, kept us on the street. Gradually, we got institutionalized. We got ill in a manner of speaking and we developed the “homeless syndrome”. Streets became our theatre home. Yes, it’s true, many of times we were thinking of the safety of a house, the warmth and the glamour of the purple carpet and the velvet stage curtain.
On the street we got acquainted with the “theatre of wandering”, a theatre stage with no horizon. We really touched our audience. We smelled them, they smelled us and we had no place to hide. Theatre with no way to escape, theatre with no blackouts. Theatre without corridors and dressing rooms. Theatre of madness, theatre of abasement.
All new theatre groups are seeking for a place in order to play even ten performances and they pay a lot of money for it. It’s a great pleasure to see in this new Festival more than fifty Greek groups wishing to present their work on the street. However, at the 2nd International Street Theater Festival, on 2010, we expect to watch performances at bus stations, in front of telephone booths, in front of security cameras for those who are on shift, on buses and trains, at the market, anywhere, as for sure we can do theatre anywhere and with all kind of materials.
When we submitted our proposal, there was anticipation for the participation of six foreign and six Greek groups. It was with great surprise that we discovered the major interest which was eventually expressed with more than seventy proposals from abroad and sixty proposals from Greece.
Naturally, financial reasons first of all, and organizational reasons as well, did not allow us to include all the groups we wished to have from abroad and on the other hand, we had to have the maximum possible participations at the Main Festival with groups from Greece. Thus, we finally selected six groups and single artists from Italy, Poland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Bulgaria and fourteen groups from Greece to be included in the Main Festival, as well as thirty three groups to be included in the Open Festival. Fifty seven groups will participate, in total, giving 240 performances.
Finally, would like to point out something very important in my opinion. All events are open to the audience. The audience will not have to pay a ticket, it will not be obliged to attend the whole performance and it is invited to participate in a vivid, direct and vigorous communication, where artists and spectators are met, in most of the cases incidentally, thus impropriating the public areas of the city in a different way than the usual.
We hope that the 1st International Street Theatre Festival will be the beginning of a small, “bloodless”, peaceful… theatrical uprising, without damages but with a lot of benefits.
We would like to thank the Ministry of Culture and the Minister Mr. Antonis C. Samaras, for giving us the opportunity to start this institution, the National Centre of Theatre and Dance for its support and trust, and its Chairman Mr. Giorgos T. Dragonas, as well as its Artistic Director Mr. Iraklis D. Logothetis.
We would like to thank as well, every single person who supported the Festival, the Minister of National Education and Religious Affairs mr Aris Spiliotopoulos, the chairman and chief executive officer of OPAP mr Christos Hadjiemmanuil, the General Secretariat of Youth, the Municipality of Athens and the Mayor mr Nikitas Kaklamanis, the Cultural Organization of the Municipality of Athens, as well as all individual sponsors and all who worked for the Festival.
And last but not least we would like to thank the Greek groups mainly, as well as the foreign ones which participate to this Festival. Our ambition is that they will flourish, multiply and inundate all streets and squares of our city.
Nikos Hatzipapas
Artistic Director
Athens, 2009
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