THEATRE professionals and amateurs – actors, directors, critics, and students – from throughout the countries of the Visegrad Group (V4) have been regularly meeting in Nitra as two festivals supported by the Visegrad Fund are held each year in this central Slovak town. At the spring festival, actors from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland meet in the Old Karol Spišiak Theatre and present theatre reflecting the culture of the central European region. Autumn is dedicated to the Divadelná Nitra Festival which ranks among the top theatre festivals held within the V4 countries.
The first year of the theatre festival was held in 1999 at Nitra’s Old Theatre, at the initiative of the long-time head of the theatre, the late Karol Spišiak. Since 2003, the festival has provided the opportunity to develop international connections between regional theatres as well as to inspire professional theatres and art schools. Veronika Gabčíková, the Nitra theatre’s dramatic adviser, told the TASR newswire that the goal of the non-competitive presentations is for people to get to know each other and to examine common features and specific differences within their national cultures.
This autumn’s Divadelná Nitra festival will be celebrating its 20th anniversary. Darina Kárová, the head of the autumn festival, said that Divadelná Nitra cooperates with many festivals and institutions in all four Visegrad countries and that the festival’s Council for Foreign Theatre systematically and intensively follows current offerings in the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, making the festival well-known for presenting both renowned directors and young talents hailing from all V4 countries.
Last year, the Divadelná Nitra association prepared several special offerings during the fall festival such as Stretnime sa! (Let Us Meet!) and Spoločnosť a zmysel umenia (Society and the Meaning of Art), an informal meeting that commemorated Slovakia assuming the presidency of the V4.
