IX POLIS Festival in Italy will focus on Nordic and Baltic theatre

The IX POLIS Festival, taking place from May 5th to 10th, 2026, in Ravenna, Italy, will focus on theatre from the Nordic and Baltic countries, showcasing directors and playwrights from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Estonia will be represented at the festival by performance artist Siim Tõniste with the project “Tivoli” and playwright Martin Algus, whose play “Something Real” will be staged as a reading at the festival in collaboration with the Estonian Theatre Agency.

The POLIS Festival is an international theatre festival that has been held since 2018, focusing on civil rights, climate change, and the role of art in society. In this year’s program, curated by Agata Tomšič and Gianluca Costantini, special attention will also be given to themes related to pleasure, care, patriarchy, and body politics. In addition to performances, the festival includes meetings and discussions with artists, critics, and theatre researchers, as well as projects involving the local community.

Siim Tõniste’s production “Tivoli” will premiere this fall in Tallinn, and Tõniste will participate in the POLIS festival as part of a residency, during which he will lead workshops with representatives of the local community. In the workshops, Tõniste will collect both personal and shared, real and imagined memories from the participants. The residency will conclude with two performances on May 9th and 10th at 16:30 at MAR – Museo d’Arte della città di Ravenna. In addition to Tõniste, the project features set designer Anita Kremm, sound designer Joonatan Kivi, and host Üüve-Lydia Toompere.

On May 10th at 21:30, Teatro Rasi will host a reading of Martin Algus’s play “Something Real,” translated into Italian by Daniele Monticelli and presented by the Estonian Theatre Agency. “Something Real” explores the formation of various human desires, dependence on them, and the consequences they bring. The play, completed in 2017, has been staged twice in Estonia — at Vanemuine (2018) and Kellerteater (2022) — and now, under the title “Qualcosa di reale,” the text is coming to the stage for the first time in Italy, where it will be directed by Iacopo Gardelli and performed by the theatre troupe Studio Doiz.

Read more at the webpage of POLIS festival.

In the photo: Siim Tõniste. Photo: private collection