TESZT 15

Euroregional Theatre Festival Timișoara
 

One of the most important projects of the Csiky Gergely Hungarian State Theatre, the Euroregional Theatre Festival in Timișoara - TESZT, has been organized annually since 2008. The event is international and is meant to promote the knowledge of multiculturalism and to inform the public about the latest theatre of dramaturgy in the region. The Festival works as a platform for cultural exchanges and also as an invitation to dialogue with the artists and other specialists in the area.

Due to its special position, Timișoara is located at the crossroads of several different cultures. From a geographical point of view, it’s close both to Budapest and Belgrade, but besides these two multicultural capitals, Timisoara is located near Arad, Novi Sad, Subotica and Szeged, all of them cities known for their special, cultural values.

 

Timișoara (Timisoara) is the most ethnically diverse spot on the Romanian map. And to this day, Hungarians are the largest ethnic minority in the country.

Since 1989, Hungarian minorities in Romania and neighbouring countries have been able to form their own organizations to represent the interests of the minority politically. On the one hand, their own theaters in various locations maintain the Hungarian language and culture, on the other hand they also provide the opportunity to cooperate with Romanian citizens and ultimately strengthen democratic and European ideas in the diaspora, an undertaking that is very difficult in today's Hungary. As European Capital of Culture (2023), Timișoara felt obliged to do this in several respects and will hopefully continue to do so in the future.  

In 2024, the Hungarian Csiky Gergely Theater hosted the TESZT Festival for the 15th time in Romania's third-largest city.

 

Festival director Attila Balázs and his team see TESZT as both a platform for cultural exchange and an invitation to engage in dialog with artists and other professionals in the field, as a call for critical engagement with the theater of the regions:

 

„We think it’s important that TESZT can be not only a cultural but also an artistic meeting point for different art forms, a place for experiments and research, for dialogue between the public and artists, where the young generation is treated as partner. … It is essential to stimulate, encourage and educate the young. Based on our past experiences, we consider that the rethinking and delineation of our main goals is quite necessary in the process of enlarging the program of the festival.“

 

The Euregional festival TESZT stands for togetherness not only on the stages of the theatres of neighbouring Balkan states, of which the West knows little or nothing, and has so far brought productions from Germany, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Croatia and Slovenia that were worth watching for the purpose of getting to know each other and exchanging ideas about democracy and diversity.

The chronicler was privileged to see at least a few highlights of this year's festival edition in person, which can be highlighted here.

 

ANYBODY

Ensemble Forte - Szkéné Theatre (Hungary)

To be or not to be? What a question! - Anybody, one of the characters in Szilárd Borbély's play. 

 

The question was followed by scenes in which typical, above all (sub)urban figures of consumer society appeared on the stage of life, only to sink just as unexpectedly into the theatrical immersion of oblivion with a mask on their face. The mask of Everyman. The genre of the play focussed on ‘amorality’: allegorical figures of medieval morality were transformed into theatrical roles. And these stories were linked by the motif of death, which was given a body in the context of a theatrical performance through its constant presence on stage.

 

Mindpolis 1.0

Art Organization Skop (Croatia)

 

Inspired by the numerous travels of Marco Polo, Emilia Agnesa and Nenad Glavan created a multi-layered text and integrated it into a cross-media project that combined storytelling, digital art, augmented reality, role-playing, chat interaction, site-specific art, video and theatre.

From the University of Belgrade, participants of DAAD theatre program for philology students had travelled to Timișoara especially to see their lecturer Nenad Glavan's play live. They were fascinated and acclaimed this strange odyssey directed by Nenad Glavan. 

The show  was steeped in topicality, transforming in the blink of an eye into a vicious thriller that essentially questioned the human paradox in the split between creation and destruction, light and darkness, Eros and Thanatos…

 

The Solitude Monologues

Independent Theatre Company Arte-Factum Timișoara (Romania)

 

was a lively, fresh, innovative look at our modern society, an theatrical illustration of the melting pot of all different classes and intentions. 

The human being, skeletonised down to the soul, who could at best buy a little human closeness, but that doesn't satisfy him either. Loneliness in all its facets, with a single common denominator, abandonment at the speed of life combined with the hopeless attempt to move forward in any kind of relationship.

 

The performance directed by Levente Kocsárdi was the blueprint for all of this and maybe all of us. It took the viewer psychically on a journey with different stations, in which each one, no matter how and where and why, showed the consumer-orientated society and clarified: ONE is the loneliest number as result of 11 monologues written by Mona Donici.

 

Pericles 

Csiky Gergely Hungarian State Theatre Timișoara (Romania)

 

A man lying in the sand. Washed up by the waves. There’s no knowing where he came from, where he is heading, what he wants or what he is fleeing from. Somewhere, in a distant land, he used to be king. The Prince of Tyre. But now he is only a man who has nothing but a story. This is Pericles’ story. But not only his. …

 

With enormous enthusiasm, musicality and their unconditional willingness to engage with director Philip Parr, the host of the festival, the Hungarian State Theatre Csiky Gergely, once again achieved a remarkable ensemble performance.

 

Let's TEST again every year!

www.teszt.ro

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