The Portuguese Association of Theatre Critics awarded its 2015 Prize to scene designer Cristina Reis, who devised a most creative and efficient set for Shakespeare’s Hamlet, produced by Teatro da Cornucópia. The production was directed by celebrated actor and …

The Latvian director Alvis Hermanis (b. 1965) had worked for approximately ten years when he “broke out” internationally by taking part in the Salzburg Festival’s Program for Young Directors with a staging of Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector General, presented …

Federico García Lorca is best known for his rural trilogy—Blood Wedding, Yerma, and The House of Bernarda Alba, but it is The Public, written before these iconic works that Lorca was to see as his true …

Croatia, the most recent addition to the European Union family, has a long-standing history both in theatre as well as in ballet and contemporary dance. To understand its current state and to appreciate contemporary works, it is useful to recall …

The 2016 Oslo International Festival was the biggest to date. Stretching over three weeks, the festival offered twenty works of theatre, dance, performance, and music as well as seminars and talkbacks. It was also the last for its creator and …

Two weeks after the first appearance of his final production for Uppsala Stadsteater, I met with Linus Tunström to discuss his tenure as the theatre’s Intendant. When Tunström arrived in Uppsala in 2008, the theatre had not been known for …

A Pessimistic Background for a Start

When I see the nth show on our stages that is interested mainly in itself, or in the current fashion, or in its perfect following of a certain aesthetics, or in quickly earned laughter …

The Fifth Dimension. This was the slogan of the fifth annual ACT Independent Theatre Festival, which took place from 19 November to 22 November 2015 in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. The festival was marked by the infectious nerve and …

During December 2015 Berlin was facing numerous socio-political situations that included the Syrian migration crisis, economic instability due to the decline of the Euro as well as internal political crises brought about by immigration, religious suffrage related to Islam, and …

Berlin’s varied theatre and performance scene is clearly one of the most vibrant and eclectic in the world. But, it has changed in many ways since the large-scale privatization of many formerly state funded theatres began in 2001. Several theatre …

What makes us human? What makes a person a person? Can an object ever attain those qualities? Can such qualities be learned, taught, formed? The German-British performance collective, Gob Squad, are not the first to ask these questions, as their …

In 2012, worldwide interest was aroused by the discovery of 1,280 pieces of art ranging from Monet to Picasso in the Munich apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt. Ronald Harwood followed this exciting and surprising story and completed his play Degenerate Art…

We all know that Facebook is a global phenomenon and, one way or another, is influencing our daily lives, whether we like it or not. I know people who, for personal reasons, or just because they prefer to do something …

The fall of 2015 marked several major events in France that will not be soon forgotten. The tragedy of 15 November and the sudden passing of Swiss director Luc Bondy on 28 November left a sense of emptiness in both …

London’s Royal Court Theatre has premiered nearly all of Caryl Churchill’s plays for more than four decades, and audience members who purchase programs there receive a bonus: a printed copy of the script. Readers who ventured beyond the production details …

These words can best sum up both the story and the scenic language of the remarkable performance Ilijada (The Iliad), a co-production of three …

The Almeida Theatre in London’s Islington has been running a season of Greek plays beginning with a rather mix-and-match Oresteia that later transferred to the West End. This was followed by Euripides’s Bakkhai, spelled thus by translator Anne Carson …