Kosova International Theatre Festival

Singing, Music and Rituals – the Theater Identifying and Meeting with Itself

The Kosova International Theatre Festival, the first edition of which will run in Prishtina from 2 to 8 November 2009, is organized by the Kosovar National Theater. The Festival is run under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports of the Republic of Kosova.

The theme of this first edition of the Festival consists of theatrical shows based on the art of singing and generally on diverse musical forms which have served as a leitmotiv to their directors and other theatrical artists inciting them to shape up images and actions on the stage.

The creative experience of the different productions which will be part of this Festival with their shows reconfirms the perpetual regenerating and exploring character of the theater which, being an artistic medium of immense possibilities and approaches, shall seek the support for its own aesthetic reconfiguration in singing and generally in music.

Another layer, no less important than music, for at least some of the shows in this edition is their rituals dimension, which their creators and shapers have adopted and creatively adapted based on the ritual traditions of different places, peoples and eras. Old songs and rites of the folk tradition persist in serving as an inspiration from which the theater, as a medium that has emerged from primitive antiquity, obtains the curiosity and its eternal need for exploration and identification with signs of a tradition from which – not accidentally so – it has inherited many of the images, reflexes, hieroglyphs and the signs of its own identity.

Consequently, structured around songs, music and the rituals, the first edition of Kosova International Theatre Festival comes with the aspiration to be a new creative presentation and experience in observing, exploiting and genuinely striving within the creative process of the stage, which by avoiding clichés and uniformity and based on the contact and the natural relation of the theatrical art with other arts and media, testifies to the power, energy, elegance, flexibility and skill of the stage to regenerate itself. Indeed, singing, music and rituals are the identification and the meeting point of the theater with itself.