ONLINE / OFFLINE in the 2020/2021 season
The brief period of relaxed measures has ended.
Theatre doors have been open since mid-November and artists took advantage of the opportunity to present new productions, the creation of which had been impacted by anti-pandemic measures or illness within their creative teams. Interesting premieres of new productions and projects took place in theatres across Slovakia. Cultural institutions also seized the chance to present reprises of popular productions in their repertoires, and embraced a novelty that is gradually becoming well-established in Slovakia: making productions available online.
The Show Must Go ON/OFF-line: “Uncompressability” Green Thursdays – a cycle of international, online discussions – episode 4
17 December, 15.00-17.00 CET on-line
Participants:
Martynas Petrikas / LTU, Associacte professor at the Faculty of Communication at Vilnius University
Savas Patsalidis / GRK, Professor of Theatre at Aristotle University and the Drama School of the National Theatre of Northern Greece
Nela H. Kornetová / CZ, Independent performer and performance maker
Moderator:
Jiří Šimek / CZ, Actor, Theatre Artist and co-founder of Ufftenživot Group
In the days of analogue technology, it was necessary to go to a particular place for culture. Once there, the experience was shared with other people. There was no way around it; it was inevitably a collective, shared encounter with theatre, music, paintings. In contrast, the present moment is characterised by fragmentation, digitalisation and personalisation. Algorithms curate unique experiences for each of us on the screens of our mobile devices. Films, music and paintings have simply been compressed into this space and today we are overwhelmed with compressed copies of them: MP4s, MP3s, JPGs, and GIFs. Somewhere, to the side of all this, sits the theatre, like a stone around which this digital river flows. The analogue epoch is well behind us and we’re already well into the digital phase. Can the compression of art and its solitary consumption help us to find a new appreciation for the shared and the collective? Does today’s digital experience offer a chance to arrive at a deeper and better understanding of the importance of collective experience than was possible when it was the only option? How is our relationship to shared experience changing, now that it is a choice?
A favourite annual event returns on 21 November 2020 with the subtitle: We’re still here!
Theatre Night is a regular theatrical event, always taking place on the third Saturday in November. Prepared by theatres throughout Slovakia for their visitors, the programme runs late into the night. “Although 2020 has presented us with countless challenges, we don’t want to miss this year’s Theatre Night. Theatres are working to bring their audiences recordings of productions, behind-the-scenes tours, live streams and other inviting programmes,” says Vladislava Fekete, director of the Theatre Institute. The Government of the Slovak Republic’s current regulations concerning the coronavirus pandemic have made it possible to open the doors of theatres once again. The eleventh edition of the international Theatre Night event will thus take place in an unconventional way, in both ONLINE and OFFLINE spaces, and all on 21 November 2020.