In 29 nine years
\nof post-Communist freedom, the city of Sibiu, in central Romania, has been the
\nhost of the most important performing arts festival in Romania 26 times. The Sibiu International Theatre Festival was designed as a multi-functional body and a creative space, allowing
\nfor the manifestation of new theatre techniques. Every time, the cultural offer
\n has been extremely rich, including productions by the
\nmost representative theatres in Romania, plays staged by prestigious foreign
\ntheatre companies, urban events held every day in the old city’s squares and
\nstreets and in the medieval fortified cities and churches around Sibiu. Part of
\nthe performances held during the festival were also brought to theatres in
\nBucharest, Cluj and Medias. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The International Theatre Festival was also the key
\nfactor in the designation of Sibiu ‘European Capital of Culture’ in 2007.
\nThanks to the market created by the festival through the Performance Exchange,
\nthe ‘Radu Stanca’ National Theatre in Sbiu has participated in some of the most
\nprestigious such festivals in the world: Edinburgh, Avignon, Naples, Brussels,
\nSeoul, Tokyo, Porto and Frankfurt.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This year’s edition
\nof the festival, held between the 14th and the 23rd of
\nJune, gathered 3,300 artists from 73 countries, who performed in 540 events in
\n75 different locations, with some 70,000 spectators every day. The audience
\nrecord – 123,000 – was reached on Sunday, the last day of the festival. Here is
\nthe founder and president of the Sibiu International Theatre Festival, the
\nactor Constatin Chiriac:<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
I
\nwould like to first bow before the citizens of this city, who have acknowledged
\nthe fact that they have one of the greatest festivals in the world and that
\nthey are worthy of it, they take responsibility for it and carry on its
\ntradition with pride. Our greatest accomplishment in the past 26 years is the
\nfact that we’ve managed to create an audience, and extraordinary audience, who
\nknows how to receive its guests, and which is now extending all across the
\ncountry.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Given the
\nfigures mentioned earlier, Constantin Chirac says that the Sibiu Festival could
\nbe described as a unique festival. This year, its partners have been the
\nembassies of France, Japan, Germany, Israel, China and Great Britain. The
\nfestival is a strategic objective for the Romanian Culture Ministry, which,
\ntogether with the local administration, is the main founder of the event, which
\nis also supported by the European Commission, the foreign cultural centers in
\nRomania and private sponsors. Last year, for the first time, the festival had
\ntwo honorary patrons: Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis, who was Sibiu’s mayor
\nfor 14 years, and the heir to the British throne, Prince Charles, whose passion
\nfor Transylvania, where he has several properties, has become a well-known
\nfact. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Sibiu International Theatre Festival has come to an end<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":82326,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37738],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-82325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n