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It requires great courage to raise the issue of national theatres at a festival, which is such an important, moreover, a very central issue in Europe. This is a very complex subject: the task that a national theatre aims and undertakes varies from country to country on one hand, because of the differences in their historical background, but on the other hand, because of the actual context. There is no regulation or recipe to provide guidance for such a situation.

As a former organiser of festivals, I have the question come to me, time and time again, as to why one undertakes a not quite seamless stunt like MITEM. Several times the ongoing festival (of 2015) has reminded me of the probably most memorable one in my life, the Third Theatre Olympics (Russia, Moscow, 2001), and the programme series entitled The Eye – Slanted Scythians View, conducted by Anatoly Vasiliev, within that.

“The theatre has always been and it will remain forever. And now, in those last fifty or seventy years, it is particularly necessary. Because if you take a look at all the public arts, you can immediately see that only theatre is giving us – a word from mouth to mouth, a glance from eye to eye, a gesture from hand to hand, and from body to body. It does not need any intermediary to work among human beings – it constitutes the most transparent side of light, it does not belong to either south, or north, or east, or west – oh no, it is the essence of light itself, shining from all four corners of the world, immediately recognizable by any person, whether hostile or friendly towards it.”