Press releases

GOMEL, 4 May (BelTA) – Gomel will host the international festival Slavonic Theater Meetings on 16-19 May. Partaking in the event will be Belarusian, Ukrainian, Russian, Polish theaters, BelTA learned from spokesman for the Gomel Oblast Drama Theater Vladimir Stupinsky.

The Gomel festival will gather artists of the Chernigov Music and Drama Theater, the Novgorod Academic Theater (Veliky Novgorod, Russia), the Nicoli Theater (Krakov, Poland), the Stelitamak Theater (the Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia), and the Belarusian State Youth Theater. The jury will be comprised of prominent Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian theater professionals. In 2017 the forum’s motto is “Theater for the future”. “Special emphasis will be placed on the plays by young writing teams, actors, directors, and artists along with the plays targeted at young audience,” Vladimir Stupinsky noted.

The forum’s program features seven performances. On the afternoon of 16 May the Gomel Youth Drama Theater will perform “Oscar and the Lady in Pink”. In the evening, right after the opening ceremony, the Chernigov Music and Drama Theater will show “The Comedy About an Unhappy Peasant, His Wife Melashka, Jew David, and the Devil Who Has Lost His Reason for Existence”.

On 17 May the Gomel Oblast Drama Theater will present a silent play “Old Pigeon House”. In the next days the Russian theaters will perform the comedy “Do not leave a woman alone” and the theatrical adaptation “Behind the Black Curtain, or Mixed Up with Pushkin”. The Gomel Oblast Drama Theater will show an interpretation of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”. The Belarusian State Youth Theater will perform “King Stakh's Wild Hunt.

First held in 1989, the festival Slavonic Theater Meetings derived from the commonwealth of major theaters of Chernigov, Gomel and Bryansk. Lately it has expanded by involving leading theaters of the neighboring states and other countries. The festival aims to unite theaters, strengthen traditions, promote new trends of the Belarusian theater art, and introduce viewers to the world and national art masterpieces. The festival is designed to restore the commontheater space.