Weather Forecast: 5 Days in the Theatre Shelter
The reappearance of spring has brought with it the thirty-fourth edition of the international theatre festival SETKÁNÍ/ENCOUNTER, which this year will feature theatre companies from universities in Poland, Ukraine, Switzerland, Austria, Serbia, Latvia, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. The forecast for this week is clear: over the course of five days, we can expect educational and cultural overflows in the form of workshops, discussions, but especially theatre productions.
This year’s theme for the international meeting is “The Storm,” which refers not only to the expected dense artistic storm of student productions, but also to the climate crisis. The JAMU students presented the thematic framework through an internal conflict of two natural entities - Morana, as the representative of winter, and her sister Vesna, the representative of spring.
A festive march through the centre of Brno to the collective singing of Bob Dylan's song brought us to Dominican Square, where a ritual dance took place, later transformed into a duel between two choirs – winter and spring – competing for supremacy, for the desire to carve out a larger space in the calendar year, so that the personification of one of those seasons would be satisfied.
The clash of interests of these two fundamental natural entities will culminate at the closing ceremony, at the end of the festival. Their conflict, which will toy considerably with the weather, will be endured in a more intimate space, in darkness or semi-darkness, by the spectators. It is in this theatrical guise that we, the editors of the MeetingPoint blog, will find ourselves, offering a diverse collection of articles throughout the festival. Hail to the theatre!
