Greek theatre director Theodoros Terzopoulos recalls the piercing sense of hope that led to the staging of the first Theatre Olympics in 1995. The idea was forged somewhat befittingly, in the ancient, sacred grounds of Delphi, where he had invited luminaries of world theatre to a festival of Greek drama.
Sitting under the Greek skies to break bread and drink wine with avant-gardists and experimental dramatists he hatched a plan to bring the international community together to connect, perform and hash out artistic differences in a splendid babel of languages, all under one roof.
“It was the end of the cold war and there was hope that the world would step into a peaceful period,” says Terzopoulos, one of the founders of the Theatre Olympics and chair of its international committee. But at exactly that moment, the Balkan wars erupted. “It made me think about the ancient Greek idea for peace on which the Olympic Games are based. I thought it would be a way to meet each other in the spirit of dialogue, openness and curiosity.”
Almost three decades on from Terzopoulos’s dream of cross-industry communion, all is not well on this Olympic mount. The 10th gathering is under way in Budapest, where 400 theatre companies from 58 countries are performing their work until 1 July. It is an international gathering on a mammoth scale: 750 shows across 100 venues, with presences from as far afield as India, Mexico and Japan, as well as eminent UK companies Complicité and Cheek by Jowl in attendance.
Even before the event began, there were rumbles of discontent on the home front, with some Hungarian theatre companies refusing to take part. At the heart of the 10th festival stands the divisive figure of Attila Vidnyánszky, artistic director of the Theatre Olympics and director of the National Theatre in Budapest. Vidnyánszky is a vocal supporter of Hungary’s far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán – who he hails as a man of “family values” – and has been embroiled in protests staged by arts and theatre students in recent years.
The war in Ukraine, and the question of whether Russian performers can and should take part, has sparked its own protest. Vidnyánszky’s programme had a visible Ukrainian presence, with two highly anticipated productions by the Kyiv-based Ivan Franko National Academic Drama theatre. It was due to stage Albert Camus’ Caligula and Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, both plays exploring power and authoritarianism, and bearing clear parallels to the Russian invasion. But the company has pulled out over the inclusion of Russian artists, claiming that it was assured, by Vidnyánszky, that there would be no such presence in his programme.
The company cites a new work by Valery Fokin, artistic director of the Alexandrinsky theatre in St Petersburg, who sits on the Olympics committee, and a screening of the film, Petropolis, starring Anton Shagin, a Russian actor who it alleges supports the war against Ukraine.
Vidnyánszky, who had told the Guardian that the war made it “impossible” to invite Russian companies, said he found the withdrawal regrettable but defended his decision to stage Fokin’s play: “I promised that there would be no Russian troupe and there is no Russian troupe. The play entitled Rex is the Hungarian National theatre’s production, directed by Valery Fokin and written by Kirill Fokin.”
Born and raised in the Transcarpathian region, Vidnyánszky speaks of close links to Ukraine’s National theatre and sustained relationships with Ukrainian artists that he has built over decades. He stressed that there had been no new developments since the Franko National Academic Drama theatre signed its contract. “In this situation, I find it exponentially more important to hold on to each other and not let go; we, the people of culture, try somehow to rebuild what is being destroyed and we should not sever all points of connection.”
An examination of war, as a theme, can still be felt as an undercurrent across Vidnyánszky’s programme. Terzopoulos will direct Brecht’s anti-war play Mother Courage and Her Children. In October, in a secondary strand to the Olympic programme, Vidnyánszky will direct Agon, a play about conflict which he decided to produce before the invasion of Ukraine, but “the whole performance has shifted since”, he said. “I believe an artist who has a conscience cannot ignore the fact that there is a war going on – if you are directing Romeo and Juliet, you will represent the war within it.”
This month, Juliette Binoche will star in a staged reading of The Matter of Light, a French-Hungarian co-production about four young Hungarians in search of meaning in the midst of the Holocaust. And earlier on in the programme, during a performance of Tolstoy’s War and Peace by National Theatre Belgrade, actors stepped out of the bounds of the Napoleonic-era drama to address the audience directly about the possibility of a world without war.
There are interrogations of identity too: a Hungarian production, Young Barbarians, staged in April and directed by Vidnyánszky’s son, Attila Vidnyánszky Jr, explored the origins of Hungarian national identity with a story inspired by a real-life collaboration between composers Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály to collect Hungary’s first folk songs. It looked at its subject matter through a deeply satirical, and seemingly anarchic, lens.
Terzopoulos, for his part, does not feel a blanket ban on Russian artists is fair or necessary. “I don’t think it’s good to overlook a country with such great artists. We don’t really know which artists support Putin. It’s not a clear situation.” And as the first Olympic gathering in the aftermath of the pandemic, he regards it as an important moment to take stock: of the various theatrical traditions that he believes are being eroded by the globalisation and homogeneity of culture, and of the effects of rightwing populism across Europe in recent years.
The latter seem especially pertinent to the festival this year, which is funded by the Hungarian government at a cost of HUF 4.56bn (about £10.8m). In 2021, Terzopoulos was part of the Olympic delegation that met Orbán. How comfortable is he to stage the Olympics in a country that has swung so far to the right? “It’s not just Orbán. There is Italy, Poland … If we eliminate these countries from the Olympics or stop collaborating with them then theatre becomes impossible. You have to look straight into the eyes of your enemies.”
But what is essential, he believes, is vigorous artistic challenge to this swing to the right. “It’s a critical time, and we must address the realities. Europe is in a dangerous place politically, socially. We have to assume a position. We don’t have a new Bertolt Brecht yet and we need one. We need theatre to be activist – we have to make it more revolutionary.”
This view puts Terzopoulos at odds with Vidnyánszky, who is not interested in activist theatre: “I believe that it is quite primitive,” he says. “For me it doesn’t have aesthetic value.” Yet Vidnyánszky holds up this difference of opinion as proof that the political agenda of the Olympics is open, plural, and a rejoinder to those who have charged both him and the government of artistic censoriousness. “Those who do not agree with our Hungarian government have always had the opportunity to send a message on stage,” he says, and adds that he is working closely with Terzopoulos in spite of their differences.
“Theodoros says the world is shifting to the right and obviously he is on the left. I am not. Interestingly, we can work together. He will direct a production at the Olympics [Nora, based on Ibsen’s A Doll’s House] and I am taking my students to Greece. There are no directives on topics here, everyone can say or show whatever they want.”
He also suggests that political disagreement at a theatre festival such as this one can, in fact, be fruitful and liberating. “I grew up in a communist world so I hate censorship. What I see is that we are going towards that again – [the sense that] you have to think one unified thing. We should not have topics that are taboo and the world is shifting towards having taboos.”
The official website calls the festival the “post-traumatic Theatre Olympics” and its overarching slogan, “… strive on, strive on, have faith and trust”, speaks to the struggles that many theatres have faced in the aftermath of the lockdowns. State support of the arts has dropped in numerous countries across Europe, including Hungary and Greece. But while theatregoers have been slow to return in the UK in the same numbers, Terzopoulos talks of a “renaissance” in Greece – “people want to go out and they have chosen the theatre”.
Figures such as Bojana Stefanović, a Serbian actor who starred in National Theatre Belgrade’s War and Peace, also report a post-Covid surge of energy in the theatre and a greater awareness of global challenges among an emerging generation of actors.“These kids are coming in and there’s a new level of awareness on how we are globally connected, and on climate issues,” she says.
Ironically, the pandemic may have made other theatremakers look inward. Terzopoulos notes that many post-lockdown dramas in the Olympics programme are more interested in ontological and existential questions of being and existence than in making political calls for change. “We would like [the theatre festival] to reflect the social and political reality around us,” he says. “Theatre needs to be a mirror of society.”
As for the Ukraine war, he feels it has not touched the imagination of theatremakers nearly enough. “I don’t think it is reflected in European theatre [as a whole]. There’s a machinery of forgetfulness around war. Art must create memory, not forgetfulness.”
Theatre Olympics, Budapest, until 1 July: www.theatreolympics2023.com
