Stage set for International Festival ‘Theatre.UZ/2013’

 

The Fourth International Festival ‘Theatre.UZ’ is set to be held on October 20-26 as part of Style.Uz Art Week 2013 in Tashkent. Organized by Fund Forum, the Youth Theater of Uzbekistan, the Ministry of Culture and Sports Affairs of Uzbekistan and Uzbekteatr, this year’s Theatre.UZ festival presents a playbill offering productions by Uzbek, Israeli, Lithuanian, Russian and Tajik theater teams.
This year’s Theatre.UZ festival offers 4 workshops, 6 international plays, 6 plays by Uzbek regional theaters, 8 plays by Tashkent theaters, Youth Creativity Program and 1 collaborative project.
The festival has been given the goal of helping to set up enduring and long-term contacts between young theaters professionals and to create a new theater community with the help of the new generation of young theater professionals.

The theater festival will feature representatives of international theaters, festivals and foundations. This major project will encourage the youth to further improve their skills and give impetus for the creation of new art projects.
This year’s festival offers stagings of works by world renowned authors such as Alisher Navoi, Abdulla Qodiri, U. Gajibekov, Alessandro Baricco, Ilya Chlaki, Hans Christian Andersen and Carlo Gozzi. In the playbill are ‘The Days Gone By’, ‘Arshin Mak-Alan’, ‘Silk’, ‘You, I’, ‘Anthology’ and ‘Amok’ among others. The festival also presents ‘Happy End’, a collaborative production by Uzbekistan and Israel, which was presented at last year’s theater festival in the form of readings with work-in-progress elements.

Theatre.UZ/2013 will welcome Tashkent and Uzbek region theaters as well as theater troupes from Lithuania, Russia, Israel and Tajikistan. The repertoire of this year’s festival is diverse and is set to impress even sophisticated theater aficionados.

Of special interest is the Youth Creativity Program, which will present 5 productions by young Uzbek directors. An Expert Commission from the International Confederation of Theater Unions has been invited to view the five productions and select a nominee, who will attend the Forum of Young Theater Professionals of CIS, Baltic States and Georgia in 2014.

In addition to theater plays, ‘Theatre.UZ/2013’ will include workshops to be taught by Belarusian, French and German theater experts at the Youth Theater of Uzbekistan and the State Institute of Arts and Culture; a meeting with theater critics Nina Masur and Yelena Liopo as well as a presentation of Avignon-Off by Greg Germain.
Since its establishment, Fund Forum has run a series of projects aimed at supporting theater arts and expanding cultural ties between Uzbek theater professionals and international colleagues. Fund Forum has been working to facilitate local theater troupes’ participation in international festivals and competitions while organizing tours in foreign countries and contributing to theater projects in Tashkent.