Less than a three-hour flight away, Budapest has always had plenty to attract Londoners – and this summer, it’s set to be among the top cultural getaways for residents of the capital. Already renowned for its old town including the famed ruin bars and thermal baths and spas, not to mention beach festival Balaton Sound – one of Europe’s largest open-air electronic music festivals – Budapest will now also play host to the 10th Theatre Olympics, a festival taking place from 1st April – 1st July.
The first Theatre Olympics took place in Greece in 1995. The idea was to create an event that brought theatre makers from around the world together, channelling the spirit (if not the competitive nature!) of the original sports-based Olympics. Approximately every four years ever since, the Theatre Olympics has taken place in a different city. This summer, almost 30 years since the first event in Athens, the festival will come to Hungary – and especially to Budapest.
With a huge range of shows to see that range from parades of giant puppets, concerts, exhibitions, dance, operetta and live theatre, the 10th Theatre Olympics will take place all over Hungary. From Easter to Midsummer’s night, Budapest and Hungary will become a celebratory meeting point for the world of performance as 400 companies from 58 countries converge to perform in the three-month festival. Countries from all over Europe and from as far East as Japan and as far West as Mexico will converge on the Hungarian capital. There will be performances of Shakespeare in several different languages, a Japanese take on Ancient Greek tragedies, and a special reading from Oscar-winning actress Juliette Binoche. Street art will include a Slovakian street circus and a history of Ukraine told with pyrotechnics, and dance includes traditional Hungarian dance and flamenco dancing from Barcelona.
The UK contingent will be represented by some of the biggest names in contemporary theatre and includes Complicité’s production of Nobel Laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead and Cheek By Jowl’s take on Calderón de la Barca’s Spanish Golden Age classic Life is a Dream (La Vida es Sueño).
At the heart of the celebrations will be the bicentenary celebrations for Imre Madách, widely regarded as one of Hungary’s greatest dramatists and born exactly 200 years ago in 1823. In fact, the slogan of the 2023 Theatre Olympics comes from his best-known work, The Tragedy of Man: it is“O Man, strive on, strive on, have faith; and trust!”. The Tragedy of Man will be at the centre of a special exhibition at the National Theater of Hungary, with footage and photographs as well as visual design from award-winning set designer Mira János. Madách’s work will be presented throughout the festival in conferences and new books, culminating in a large-scale, international performance, including by groups of theatre students in a special performance.
With numerous festivals taking place within the festival, a major part of the 10th Theatre Olympics will be played by MITEM – Hungary’s largest annual theatre festival which takes place at the National Theatre in Budapest. Shows presented in MITEM will include classic texts from across the world, as well as new work, such as Nora, a new and reimagined classic text based on Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and directed by Theodoros Terzopulos from Greece. Other classic texts include The Tragedy of Faust, performed by a company from China, and Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui performed by a company from Ukraine.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a theatre festival without some Shakespeare and this year’s Theatre Olympics will include a Georgian take on Richard III and Othello, a version of The Tempest from Italy and an Indian Macbeth. Sophocles’ Electra and Euripides’ The Trojan Women will have a fresh Japanese take. Taking a more contemporary approach, Belgium’s Peeping Tom (who have become crowd favourites in London in recent years thanks to sell-out performances at the London International Mime Festival) perform Triptych: The missing door, The lost room and The hidden floor.
Theodoros Terzopulos, Chair of the International Committee of the Theatre Olympics, said, “Hungary, with its great and far-reaching theatrical traditions, has been taking an active part in the global developments in the field of theatre practice and theory. Budapest, a beautiful and unique monument of the world’s cultural heritage, is an international cultural metropolis ready to build bridges connecting other theatrical traditions. Well-staffed with talented and experienced artistic, technical and administrative experts, the National Theatre is the institutional hub of Hungarian theatre that is as open to avant-garde international theatrical proposals as it is to upholding the principles of tradition. Thus it is well-placed to build new bridges between different schools and stage languages. In this day and age when homogenization of the theatre is the prevailing trend, the National Theatre, whose motto is reconciliation and New Humanism, embraces diversity, tolerance and multiculturalism.”
For more information and to book tickets visit: https://szinhaz.org/en/
