The 10th International Theatre Olympics will take place next year in Hungary. The programme will feature work by Silviu Purcărete, Jan Klata and Serbia’s Boris Liješević
Details for the 10th International Theatre Olympics were announced at a press conference in Budapest on 13th December.
Between April and July next year, 200 companies from 35 countries will present their work in Budapest and around Hungary. The opening ceremony will take place on 15th April 2023 and
During the Olympics, theatres from across the country will either host one production from abroad or one from a Hungarian-language theatre from one of Hungary’s neighbouring countries. The main events will take place as part of the 9th Madách International Theatre Meeting (MITEM) at the National Theatre in Budapest, which takes place within the Olympics. In addition to this, there will also be dance, puppetry and street theatre performances, with a total of around 300 events taking place across three-month period. On 27th May the National Theatre will present an open-air passion play in front of the Saint Stephen Basilica.
Press conference for the 10th International Theatre Olympics
As part of the 2023 MIETM programme, audiences will be able to see a programme of work by international heavy-hitters, including Romeo Castellucci’s BROS, Complicte’s Drive Your Bones Over the Dead, adapted from the novel by Olga Tokarczuk and directed by Simon McBurney, Belgian company Peeping Tom’s new show Triptych: The missing door, The lost room and The hidden floor, Jan Klata’s The Trojans, Cheek by Jowl’s Life is Dream, directed by Declan Donnellan, Teatro Stabile di Torino’s production of Alessandro Serra’s The Tempest, Slava Polunin’s iconic Snow Show, Silviu Purcărete’s The Scarlet Princess, Heiner Goebbels’ Everything That Happened and Would Happen¸ Greek director and choreographer Dimitris Papaioannou’s Ink/A Piece for Two Male Performers and War and Peace, directed by Boris Liješević for the National Theatre Belgrade.
The International Theatre Olympics was created in Greece in 1995 and intended to evoke the spirit the ancient Olympics. MITEM was founded in 2014 with the aim of putting Hungary on the international festival map.
Main image: War and Peace directed by Boris Liješević
For more information visit: TheatreOlympics2023.com
Natasha Tripney is a writer, editor and critic based in London and Belgrade. She is the international editor for The Stage, the newspaper of the UK theatre industry. In 2011, she co-founded Exeunt, an online theatre magazine, which she edited until 2016. She is a contributor to the Guardian, Evening Standard, the BBC, Tortoise and Kosovo 2.0
