ITTA Director Octavian Seyo, Director of the International Theatre Festival in Bucharest, Romania
《Drama Town and Drama Festival》
I would like to talk briefly with you about three different world theatre towns, and then discuss their goals, inspirations and cultural perspectives.
First, let's look at this very interesting word: town. We usually think that the concept of small town is between city and countryside, but we have not carefully studied the specific differences between them. Cities are bigger and less human than small towns, which depend on interpersonal communication, community formed by people, and common social culture - which is what drama needs!
Maybe we need to go back to another concept: what is theatre? A question that we are all familiar with can be answered from different angles. Anyway, when I use the concept of "theatre", I have only one definition in my mind, one of the simplest, the most beautiful and the most poetic. In the 1960s, in Frozvaf, Poland, the great dramatist Grodowski said in beautiful and infectious language that drama is an encounter, an encounter between actors and audiences, an encounter between all the people present. "Encounter" is what I try to focus on, because I think it involves the core of Contemporary Theatre - the encounter between people, so that theatre has become an exciting place to explore the possibilities of human beings. A moment of unexpected encounter, human beings can share the feelings of the soul! uuuuuuuuuuuuu The fascination with encounters also makes me pay special attention to the following three drama festivals.
First, Edinburgh International Theatre Festival. Today it is considered the most important Theatre Festival in the world. It began in 1947 in a small Scottish town. Note that it was not held in a big city! Most of the British cities were destroyed by World War II, so this humble and humid Edinburgh town became the center of the world's performing arts. I hope you will notice that the intrinsic motivation that triggers this drama festival is to hope that it can give people trust and expectations. The founder of the first Edinburgh International Drama Festival said, "I hope to provide a platform for the blossom of human spirit." Perhaps this view seems a bit old-fashioned today, but at that time, just after the end of World War II, the smoke still hung over the hearts of the people. This pursuit is precisely what the world needs most. People are eager to revive the belief of the spiritual world of mankind and to breed new things.
As we all know, the Edinburgh International Drama Festival has become one of the most important festivals in the world, and its influence is not limited to the cultural field. Only two events in the world can sell more tickets than Edinburgh in August: the Football World Cup and the Olympic Games. Edinburgh provides a huge gathering of professionalism, skill and artistic pursuit, whose intrinsic values - the prosperity of human civilization - are the cornerstones of its long history. Theatre as a force of change to the world, not simply pure entertainment!
The second festival I want to talk about is the Theatre Olympics. It was planned and launched by a group of outstanding pioneers in the 1980s. Some insightful people, such as Tezopoulos of Greece, Robert Wilson of the United States and Tadao Suzuki of Japan, believed that the world needed such a theatrical festival, which could show the true spirit of the Olympic movement, provide the possibility of crossing national boundaries and eliminate the border between you and me. It is held in different countries and regions around the world, Asia or Europe, across the ocean barrier.
In 2016, the Drama Olympics was held in Wroclaw, Poland. Wroclaw is the capital of European culture. The activities of that year were brilliant. Music, literature, dance, film and other arts were involved, which is enough to be recorded in the annals of history. The core theme of the drama is "Theatre, Memory and the Present". I have the privilege to join the discussion and discuss the major human crisis facing the West: the refugee problem around a performance of that year. "Our Despicable Sister" plays a dialogue between "victims of history" and the people living in the present age, reminding us of the crises, catastrophes and unbearable suffering that mankind experienced in the early 20th century. Such a festival presents performances far beyond the entertainment function of drama, bringing about deep thinking and prompting people to think about themselves and others. If theatre can't be an opportunity for us to understand others, what does it mean? It allows us to gaze at the other, to abandon the pretentious label, and to understand suffering in an all-round way. Digitalization has brought revolutionary changes to mankind, and I always think of what Susan Santak said: the more pictures we see of suffering, the more reluctant we are to truly feel their pain emotionally. Today, pictures of horrible disasters are everywhere, in your living room and in your office, but why have we spent a minute and a half with them to sympathize, think and understand them? And in the theatre, there's no escape! Our Despicable Sister has allowed people in Frotswaff and around the world to rethink what human beings are in a way that understands the suffering of others.
The third one I want to talk about is the Sibiu International Theatre Festival in Romania, which is more emotionally close to me. Twenty-five years ago, it started as an art gathering organized by a very small theatre academy. Today, it has nearly 70,000 audiences and theatre groups from all continents participating every day. Such a great Theatre Festival has become a reality in a small town in Romania. Everyone who participates in the Sibiu International Drama Festival or hears about the Sibiu Drama Festival knows that there is a special play that resonates in the soul with the town of Sibiu and has irreplaceable symbolic significance. The play is Faust, a work that sings heartily for the resounding name of the capital of literature and art in Europe. For critics and most theatrical scholars, "Faust" is one of the greatest and most magnificent performances of today. There are more than 120 performers on the stage. Its performance venue is the factory ruins of the pre-Communist period in Sibiu. Huge and abandoned industrial sites have been enchanted and become places of passion for culture and art. And this magical transformation, the abandoned factory into a stage to stimulate the creation of the human spiritual world, itself means the extraordinary characteristics of the theatre - in the theatre, everything can be changed. Sibiu is the best example of this magic: from an economic point of view, it has completely changed the town of Sibiu, which has become the lowest unemployment rate in Europe; from a cultural point of view, it has changed the cultural temperament of the whole country, the illiteracy rate of the whole country has also been greatly reduced, this grand event has affected the streets and lanes, countless charming art and cultural projects along the way. The power of culture is rooted in the hearts of the people; most importantly, from the theatre point of view, it affects everyone in Sibiu, every audience here - as long as you are in it, you will understand that drama, in this increasingly sad world, means Supreme joy.
Finally, I conclude by quoting Oscar Wilde's famous phrase: "All of us are in the mire, but there are always people who choose to look up at the stars." We can learn a lot from these world famous theatre towns - Edinburgh, Frotswaff and Sibiu, but most importantly, theatre can help us look up at the stars.
Mr. Octavian Seyo addressed the ITTA Forum
(These contents are from the tape recordings of the speaker.）