As of January 1, 2018, I am no longer employed at the Csiky Gergely Hungarian State Theatre, furthermore I have also resigned from my position as the artistic coordinator of TESZT festival.
We celebrated duly at the 10th anniversary of TESZT, as we felt it important to evaluate all previous editions. The fact that the open call for the 2018 edition attracted almost 300 applications, speaks volumes about how this festival has grown into a defining theatre event of the region, one that also draws considerable international attention.
– a talk with Szymon Adamczak –
How did you become a director? Tell us a bit about yourself.
I prefer to be called a “theatre maker” instead of a director. Directing is mostly seen as some sort of hierarchy and I wouldn’t dare to pretend that I know everything. Working between the independent performing arts scene and public institutions has taught me that being a director is only one of the many roles I could assume. For the past years I have been mostly a dramaturg and a writer, occasionally also a producer, an educator, a curator and a journalist.
The theatrical experiment with the title Forbidden Books (close it and put it away) will open at Temps d’Images festival in Cluj-Napoca on Sunday, November 12, at 7pm. The creators of the performance were born between 1989-1991 in four different European countries, they currently live in three other and identify themselves as belonging to an array of communities. They are, for example, Hungarians but Romanians, Hungarians living in Romania, Polish living in the Netherlands. Theatre makers with the privilege to speak in front of an international audience.
TESZT, the Euroregional Theatre Festival Timișoara, Romania is an international festival that has been organised annually since 2008. The event aims to promote multiculturalism, works as a platform for cultural exchange and also as an invitation to dialogue with the artists and other professionals from the Eastern European and Balkan region.
The 10th edition of TESZT will start on May 21st. One of the most important missions of the festival is to promote the cultural exchange and to support collaboration among artists and theatres of the region. This is also what inspired the making of EXIT, the opening production of this year’s edition, a coproduction between the Csiky Gergely Hungarian State Theatre of Timișoara, the Ioan Slavici Classical Theatre of Arad and the Sombor National Theatre. The performance is directed by Schilling Árpád, who was present at last year’s edition of TESZT with the performance The Day of Fury.
The 10th edition of TESZT starts next weekend, and it is preceded by great interest. As a result of the high demand, two additional dates have been added to the programme: the performances EXIT and Kálmán’s Day will both played two times.
TESZT is just around the corner, with preparations in full swing and tickets selling fast. Because several studio performances are already sold out, but the demand is still high, the organisers have scheduled additional dates for some of the shows.
Are you a theatre lover? Do you enjoy meeting new people? Do you speak English and would like to test yourself out in an international environment? If you would like to go behind the scenes at an international theatre festival and you recognise yourself in the description above, sign up to become a volunteer at TESZT!