A party open to new experiences
Thirty-five years after its foundation, the sixteenth Theater Festival of Havana is to be held from 22nd to 31st of October. It calls to think of the practice of stage direction and proposes a tribute to the renowned British director Peter Brook on his 90th birthday, and also the 30 years of creative work of “Teatro Buendia”.
The Festival, which is governed again by Marti´s phrase: “In Theater as in everything, we can create in Cuba”, takes place amidst a landscape that offers refreshing perspectives for the island, opens new boundaries and seeks various forms of renovation and permanence.
For over three decades the event has sought to establish possible bridges between the public and artists, producers and actors, teachers and amateurs, students, theoretics, Cubans and foreigners, all in the same space of dialogue. In this process, well-recognized personalities such as Patrice Pavis, Enrique Buenaventura, Eugenio Barba, Santiago Garcia, Dario Fo or Denise Stoklos, or playwrights and contemporary scholars such as Oscar Cornago Alvaro Solar or Guillermo Calderon have reached the Havana halls.
In order to ensure a better curatorial concept, one of the values displayed in the Festival this year is the successful management of funds by the National Council for the Performing Arts. These and other efforts have allowed us to organize an exhibition that includes around forty groups from eighteen countries: Canada, United States, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, France, Spain, Norway, Russia , Monaco, Denmark and Australia, in addition to more than fifteen shows of national groups.
It is also important to note the shows that corroborate the presence of Cuban playwrights in the international arena and sustainability of collaborative projects with foreign groups. But it is undoubtedly that the renowned Monte Carlo Ballet is one of the most anticipated news in the context of this festival. The spectator will attend a special event scheduled for the closing ceremony at the Avellaneda hall of the National Theater of Cuba, in which will perform a group that «for over a century has been enrolled in the best pages in the history of choreographic art».
