THE 7TH EDITION OF THE INTERFERENCES INTERNATIONAL THEATRE FESTIVAL WILL TAKE PLACE ONLINE

The 7^th edition of the Interferences International Theatre Festival organized by the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj will take place between November 19-29. According to initial plans, the eleven-day theatrical event was originally intended to feature a number of foreign and domestic performances in the halls of the Cluj theatre, but the current pandemic renders that impossible, therefore, this year's festival, entitled Horizons, will take place online.

According to festival director Gábor Tompa, this year's festival is looking for answers to the following questions: how does the schedule dictated by the coronavirus, as well as the various instances of social and political unrest, which seek to completely rewrite history and pull the veil of oblivion over centuries of cultural memory impact our daily lives, and in such circumstances, how can theatre be further developed, how can the theatre be renewed – is there still light at the end of the tunnel?

A total of thirty-four performances will be available for viewing during the festival, grouped into three segments. The Horizons section also includes recordings of performances that would have been present at the live, in-person version of this year’s festival, including productions by Silviu Purcărete, József Nagy, András Urbán, Michal Dočekal, Gábor Tompa, Nuno Cardoso, Boris Yukhananov.

The Union of European Theatres is celebrating its 30^th anniversary this year, so the UTE30 section of Interferences will feature eleven outstanding plays produced by the Union’s current and former member theatres. Among the directors who staged these performances we find names such as Giorgio Strehler, Krystian Lupa, Lev Dodin, Declan Donellan, Gábor Tompa, Alexandru Darie and Gábor Székely.

The festival’s OFF programme features performances by young and independent artists such as Leta Popescu and Cătălin Bocîrnea, among others, as Interferences would like to provide support to the independent theatrical sphere during these trying times.

This year's program also included four opera performances, and as the closing event of the festival, a concert by the Loose Neckties Society, which will be broadcast live on November 29, from the theatre's Main Hall, adding a splash of color to the festivities.

The performances featured in the Horizons and UTE30 sections of the festival will be available on the Interferences website (www.interferences-huntheater.ro), while the OFF programme will be available on the festival’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/Interferences.Festival). The broadcast performances can be viewed free of charge, and they are subtitled in Hungarian, Romanian, and English. The detailed daily programme of the Interferences International Theatre Festival is already available on the event's website.

The festival was organized with the support of the Ministry of Culture, the Government of Hungary, the Bethlen Gábor Fund, and the Cluj-Napoca Mayor's Office and City Council.

The organizers reserve the right to make changes to the programme!