{mosimage}Theatre lovers do not often have many opportunities to enjoy good plays in other languages than Finnish. The 4th International Baltic Circle Theatre Festival will bring temporarily a solution to the problem.
Finnish and foreign audiences have an excellent opportunity to discover artists from different places in Europe in the International Baltic Circle Theatre Festival, since one of the goals of the festival is to build a bridge for theatre lovers, companies and actors all over Europe.
The quality of the plays featured this year is really high. Latvian director Alvis Hermanis, who won the European Theatre Prize this year, will show his play Ice, an extraordinary tale focused on a sect that hunts for “living hearts”, a stage adaptation of the Russian author Vladimir Sorokin. Meanwhile, Belarusian group Free Theatre, that is also a European Theatre Prize winner, will perform three plays, one being a world premiere. The three performances are subtitled in English. Lithuania is also represented in the festival with the Theatre Laboratory Atviras Ratas, visiting with its play Open Circle, aimed at being an open forum for the young actors.
Not only Baltic groups come to the festival, but also many others with a great presence of Scandinavian ones. The Swedish Teater Terrier will perform its brand new performance Dallas, and the Norwegian Verk Produksjoner will bring on stage a work from the most famous Norwegian dramatist, Finn Iunker. All these plays are in English.
The Slovenian director Janez Janša will bring some polemic to the festival with his interactive movie DemoKino, dealing with topics like abortion, cloning, etc. The audience can vote in favour or against each topic and decide how the movie continues. This is a totally innovative concept, a “choose your own adventure” book idea turned into a film.
Apart from plays, the festival offers much more for those interested in the world of theatre. Jeff Johnson, an American theater scholar, will give an international theatre seminar where the present situation of theatre in Baltic countries and Finland will be discussed.
Performances
Ice
Jaunais
Rīgas Teātris (Latvia)
Directed by European Theatre Prize
winner Alvis Hermanis.
18-19.11 – 7 pm
Being Harold
Pinter
Free theater (Belarus)
The play is based on the text of Nobel prized author Harold
Pinter. The plot lines are held together by one central theme: the
problem of violence in its many diverse forms.
18.11 – 5 pm
Legends of
Childhood
Free Theater (Belarus)
The play is based on the personal stories of the
actors.
16.11 – 8 pm, world premiere
Generation
Jeans
Free Theater (Belarus)
A monologue about jeans, rock music and freedom.
17.11 – 7 pm
Ifigeneia
Verk Produksjoner (Norway)
Norwegian
dramatist Finn Lunker ponders the reasons for war in his adaptation
of Euripides’ classic.
17.11 – 7 pm
18.11
– 3 pm
Solesombra
Teatr
Akhe & Theatre Satire on Vasilyevsky Island (Russia)
A tender
and bitter story about the universal loneliness, the ideal of
happiness – and the impossibility of it.
21.11 – 7 pm
Open Circle
Atviras
Ratas (Lithuania)
The goal of the Open Circle’s young
Lithuanian actors is to talk straight theatre language abiding by the
rules of theatre.
21.11 – 7 pm
22.11 – 4 pm
Best of Dallas
Teater Terrier
(Sweden)
The greatest cliffhanger in television history will be
solved: Who Shot J.R.?
23-24.11 7 pm
I Do Not Speak of
Love Here
Teatr Cinema (Poland)
A visually formal and physical
study of loneliness.
16.11 – 6 pm
17.11 – 5 pm
Films
Demokino
Aksioma
/ Janez Janša (Slovenia)
DemoKino makes the audience interact giving answers to the questions of life.
21-23.11 – 7
pm
24.11 – 3 pm
Kinoteatr.doc (Russia)
Kinoteatr.doc presents five movies from its repertoire.
21-22.11 – 7 pm
Baltic Circle 2007: 16-24.11 IN HELSINKI
For more information and full schedule with the list of venues:
www.Q-teatteri.fi/baltic_circle