Estonian contemporary performing arts showcase
WELCOME!
The next Estonian contemporary performing arts showcase takes place September 4–7th, 2023 in collaboration with Estonian biggest annual theatre festival DRAAMA. The festival is organized by the Estonian Theatre Agency.
Estonian Theatre Agency’s showcase is essentially a festival of contemporary performing arts. The festival program does not represent the mainstream of our theatrical art, and more classical examples of our word-based theater are generally excluded from the showcase format. The festival is mainly aimed at a few dozen invited guests, whose expectations and hopes for the festival are to find new contacts, partners, artists, and productions to invite to their festivals or theater houses.
The Estonian Theater Agency offers theatre tickets and finances the accommodation of all the guests, as well as covers the international transport costs of some foreign guests. If you are interested in taking part in our festival, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We are always glad to meet old friends and get to know new ones!
For any inquiries please contact: Liisi Aibel / liisi@teater.ee / +372 55 90 7002 (phone, WhatsApp)
INTRODUCTION & HISTORY
The Estonian contemporary performing arts showcase, previously called draamamaa.weekend, has been held annually since 2013. From 2021, the festival will take place in cooperation with the Estonian Theater Festival DRAAMA.
Estonian Theatre Agency’s showcase brings annually about 35 personally invited foreign curators and theater directors to Tallinn. The guests are invited in close cooperation between the theaters participating in the festival and the Estonian Theater Agency. The main goal of the festival is to expand and strengthen the contacts of Estonian performance institutions with foreign countries and to increase the possibility that valuable productions will go beyond Estonia. In addition to the performance program, the festival has various meetings, acquaintances, and, if possible and necessary, also showings of the new productions in progress.
The festival program is put together by the team of the Estonian Theater Agency based on the offers from the theaters, taking into account the export potential of the productions and the possibility of transporting and adapting the production to different halls; the possibility to translate the production text in such a way that not too much is lost during the process (incl. reception by the audience) and overall flexibility. There are no genre restrictions on productions, but productions aimed at adult viewers are preferred.
In addition to the above criteria, the program takes into account the criticism of the productions or the new production’s feedback on the creators’ previous works and the fact that the productions would be new and exciting for those festival-goers who have already visited a lot of theaters in their lives. We assume that foreign visitors will no longer come to Estonia only to look for Eastern European exotics because we belong wholly to the field of contemporary European performing arts and our performing artists are able to compete with their colleagues in Berlin or Amsterdam.
