2020 invigorated by the active project Be SpectACTive!

“We build upon the latest trend in working with the spectators: we are changing the focus of creative work for the audience to creatively working with the audience. We thus follow in the footsteps of international culture institutions that work with local communities,” explains Anna Šimončičová, Project Manager at the Be SpectACTive!.
The 2020 programme of Divadelná Nitra, the major international theatre festival in Slovakia, is put together by its spectators. As many as 43 active spectators from Nitra and the surrounding region have joined the 2020 Audience Programme Board. Though the corona crisis cut short their regular face-to-face sessions, they carried on working online from home.
Eventually, it was in early summer that they reunited at the same roundtable. Led by their coordinator Miro Zwiefelhofer and full of the energy stored over the previous months, they engaged in vibrant discussion.  The output is a choice of four productions for the main festival programme that will bear the stamp of “Audience Choice”.
In September 2020, the Audience Board will join the Festival to compare their earlier observations in discussions with theatre professionals.

The production Icarus is one of the frontrunners for the Festival première. It is bound to set the Festival into the dance to the beat of such themes as borders and freedom. The production, led by the international creative trio Marie Goudain (France), Jaro Viňarský (Slovakia) and Václav Kalivoda (Czech Republic) in collaboration with the festival TANEC PRAHA and the J. Rosinský Elementary Art School in Nitra, has been emerging for over a year. The cast and co-authors are teenagers from Nitra and Prague who attended creative workshops in the two cities, along with lectures on contemporary dance, and the very process of creation and rehearsals. The young performers, in conjunction with the three professional artists, shall share with the audience the imprint the current era and the approaching adulthood has left upon them.
During the summer, the team will reconvene during residential stays in Nitra and Prague to present their output in première at Divadelná Nitra on 26 September 2020

The months of vacant theatre auditoria, though also of the delight nurtured exclusively by virtual art are to be remedied at last. Audiences have much to look forward to within the six days of the International Theatre Festival Divadelná Nitra 2020. To be held as originally scheduled, from 25 to 30 September, the Festival will come in somewhat altered version due to the corona crisis restrictions. Nonetheless, audiences will not miss any of the Festival delight. Quite on the contrary: the 2020 edition is a promise of thought-provoking forms of presentation that will distort the stereotypical reception of theatre.

The theme of the 2020 edition of Divadelná Nitra is TERRITORY ETHOS. When the convenors first thought of the theme, they couldn’t have dreamed of how perfectly is would reflect the current state of affairs.