The Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport of Ajara is granting the world of theater a great gift: the Batumi International Theater Festival. On December 7-20 the theatrical festival will take place for the first time in the coastal city of Georgia.

Launching an international festival of theater was the idea of Andro Enukidze and his foreign friends, made into reality with the support of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport of Ajara. Enukidze is a Georgian theater director and currently an artistic director in the Batumi Ilia Chavchavadze State Theater.

The Batumi International Theater Festival has a few ambitious aims. First, it seeks to mark Batumi on the world’s theatrical map, and establish the city as place rich in theatrical culture and traditions. While doing that, the festival also aspires to raise the popularity of the region of Ajara in Europe and the rest of the world.

Second, culture is a two-way-street: as the festival is expected to introduce Georgia to the outer world, by bringing the international plays to Georgia, the Batumi International Festival will also bring the outer world to the country. The Georgian audience will become more aware of the current world trends in theater, and get more acknowledged in the leading and best global theatrical companies. The festival will further work as a networking opportunity for those in the field, making it easier than ever for Ajarian theater professionals to find partners for their co-productions and international projects.

And last but certainly not least, the Batumi International Theater Festival aims to popularize the modern theatrical forms and tendencies in Ajara, and in this way nurture the professionalism and qualifications of the creative minds employed in the field in this region.

The festival has a council of international directors/experts, made up with influential theater producers, professionals and festival directors from all around the world. The council members are: Roman Doljanski (Israel), Dariush Kosinski (Poland), Jacek Glomb (Poland), Asta Kazlauskiene (Lithuania), Lucian Baleanu (Romania), Andro Enukidze (Chairperson, Georgia).

The participants of the first-ever Batumi International Theater Festival will be renowned theater companies and troupes from Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, and Turkey who were selected through a careful judging process by the festival council. Within the frames of the festival, a ‘show-case’ will take place where the audience will be able to attend the local plays.

The Batumi International Theater Festival 2019 kicks off on Saturday, December 7 with a German production of ‘Medea’. The other highlights of the festival are ‘The Devils,’ based on a book by the same name by Dostoevsky, remastered by the Polish, scheduled for December 13, and an Italian production of ‘Divine Comedy’ on December 19-20. La Repubblica has written about the latter: “Angels and Devils clash in spectacular duels. Acrobatic lights, flying actors, souls that fall like leaves in autumn… It could be the description of a painting by Hescher or Bosch, but it’s an Emiliano Pellisari show.”

The tickets for the festival are on sale on biletebi.ge.

By Nini Dakhundaridze