In 2014, the 68^th Festival d’Avignon, for the first time under artistic direction of Olivier Py, managed to survive both the strikes by part-time cultural workers (the “intermittents”) who fought to close down a number of shows as well …

The Oslo International Festival, now in its seventh year, has established itself as a vital destination on the experimental performance circuit. The festival and Black Box Theatre, which runs the event, serve a critical function in Norway’s performing arts community. …

The National Theatre in Budapest has been troubled by political and cultural cross-currents for the past years, which have left temporary marks on its audience, repertoire, and stagings as well as long-term marks on its physical structure. Let us begin …

Founded in 2000 by Jale Karabekir and Zeynep Kaçar, Tiyatro Boyalı Kuş (Theatre Painted Bird) is Turkey’s pioneer feminist theatre and performance company. The group is primarily known for their deconstructive interpretations of plays from the Turkish and Western European …

Nachtasyl was received as a radical sensation when it premiered in Moscow in December 1902 under the co-direction of Nemirovich-Danchenko and Stanislawsky and performed by the ensemble of the Moscow Art Theatre. Stanislawsky himself played Satin, one of the denizens …

During a brief visit to Madrid in April 2015, I saw four plays. They ranged from a spectacular production at the Teatro Español’s Matadero of Fernando Arrabal’s latest work, Pingüinas, to a surprisingly moving one-woman reading of Itziar Pascual’s Variaciones …

Montreal’s Festival Transamériques has a new director, Martin Faucher, actor, director, teacher, administrator and artistic consultant to the festival since 2006. For his first festival, his program choices in dance and theater proved to be every bit as exciting and …

Many theatre festivals in Germany make headlines in the national and international press. The biennial Augenblick mal! (a rough translation might be “Just a moment!”), whose program this year not only featured top German productions but also workshops, seminars and …

The political tensions that have recently developed between Russia and the West have had an impact on the reception of Russian culture and theatre in Finland. Over the past year, Finnish theatre companies and particularly the Finnish National Theatre have …

The international popularity of the annual Berlin Theatre festival, the Theatertreffen, continues to grow, and so does the demand for the limited number of seats, especially when productions are presented in a small venue, or, in the case of Castorf’s…

Juan Carlos Rubio’s Las heridas del viento

Juan Carlos Rubio has had quite a hit with Las heridas del viento [The Wounds of the Wind]. The play first premiered over a decade ago at Miami’s Teatro 8, in a production …

Swedish director Linus Tunström’s new staging of the first part of Goethe’s Faust at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden insightfully moves the text into the twenty-first century. Much has been made of the director’s “outsider” status as a non-German director and the …