Битеф

11 th BITEF POLYPHONY 2010 ART AND THEATRE - COMMUNITIES FOR LIFE 16-25 September 2010

Bitef Polyphony discovers, explores and presents those areas of new theatre tendencies, which emerge and evolve due to the commitment of theatre artists and other professionals working together - with young people primarily - in different fields and areas of activity encouraging changes and altering the set practices. Its principal intention is to explore the emerging'new theatre tendencies'realising that there are many variations in this infinite space. Sometimes it can involve us in endless search, sometimes the search is final, and sometimes something in-between can happen. Its name, Bitef Polyphony, symbolically links it with the musical form, which has become its conceptual brand and its programme, as a big and complex composition game, is governed by the same principle: through impulses offered by many voices, polyphony and counterpoint. It is by no means accidental that from the very beginning this game has been accompanied and supported by theoretical postulates revealing the potential of magical ties among different fields of art, science and daily life. The eleventh Bitef Polyphony explores three fields and movements in them, which simultaneously reveal, through projects presented, although verbally promoted desirable backbones of strategic development, the models, which must assert themselves time and again and confirm their importance, value and the need to exist even if they are proclaimed the desirable backbone of strategic development. This year the focus is on the theatre forms, which are directly reflected in the community theatre, theatre in education and theatre for inter-cultural dialogue. Moving in step with the big Bitef, Bitef Polyphony will create room to question social conventions within these fields and to examine oneself. That is why this year's Bitef Polyphony's focus is not on productions. Its open workshops and interactive presentation should enable all those attending them to establish a direct dialogue and communication and to exchange knowledge, experience, views... Since this year's Bitef has no theme- theme is the programme, itself- also to Bitef Polyphony. In the same way as it was making the play out of the theme, now it is playing with the programme. Bitef is opening with the research performance Isabella's room, Bitef Polyphony is opening with the performance by Theatre Mimart Limes which came out from researching process of "Nela's room", and than from one workshop to another, it is exploring different communities, relations and experiences of direct communication between concepts theatre-community, theatre-nature, theatre-education, theatre- science... School teachers will seek for new Chekhov... The first Bitef Polyphony took place during the 34th Bitef in 2000 with the support of the European Foundation for Culture and the network of Open Society Funds in seven countries in South-East Europe. The subject of Bitef was Theatre and Evil, and Bitef Polyphony addressed the problem of violence by presenting and evaluating the project Art for Social Changes - Game against Violence. The first Polyphony within the framework of Bitef meant, one could say, an important chapter in the conception of this side event, which never ceases to develop and today is apostrophised as a concept, which has taken its root as a special expression of Bitef new theatre tendencies. Ljubica Beljanski-Rlstić

LJUBICA BELJANSKI - RISTIC

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