The Art-Direction of ‘Territoria’ consists of active participants in the theatre process and conductors of innovative cultural programmes:

Yevgeny Mironov

Theatre and film Actor, Artistic Director of Theatre of Nations, a member of the Council for Culture and Arts under the President of the Russian Federation; co-founder of ‘Territoria’ Festival.

Kirill Serebrennikov

Theatre and film Director, Artistic Director of ‘Gogol Centre’, founder of the ‘Platforma’ project, professor at School-Studio of Moscow Art Theatre; co-founder of ‘Territoria’ Festival.

Roman Dolzhansky

Theatre critic, Artistic-Director of ‘NET’ Festival; co-founder of ‘Territoria’ Festival 

Andrey Urayev

Professor at School-Studio of Moscow Art Theatre, Director, President of the cultural fund ‘Eginda’; co-founder of ‘Territoria’ Festival

Teodor Currentzis

Conductor, Artistic Director of Perm State Opera and Ballet

Chulpan Khamatova

Theatre and film Actress, and co-founder of ‘Gift of Life’ charity.

Maria Mironova 

Theatre and film Actress

The idea for the festival was born in 2005, when the Presidential Council of Russian Federation launched the ‘Action to support theatrical initiatives’ program. The founders decided to expand the boundaries of premiums and formulated the idea of a fundamentally new concept for an educational cultural festival.

Thus in 2006, an international festival-school ‘Territoria’ was initiated. The Organizing Committee and the Art Directorate of which includes: Yevgeny Mironov (Chairman of the Organizing Committee), Roman Dolzhansky, Teodor Currentzis, Maria Mironova (since 2008), Kirill Serebrennikov, Andrey Urayev Chulpan Khamatova

The organizers of the festival offered a completely different method of involving Russian youth theatre in an international cultural context: by meeting and interacting with current events and significant trends in the world of theatre and the performing arts. Year after year, the main audience and participants of the festival are the students of theatre and art schools of Russia and CIS countries.

The students come to ‘Territoria’ to see the most innovative theatrical performances and hear pioneering musical compositions, to participate in master classes with leading figures of the world of culture, and to communicate with each other and with members of the artistic directors of the festival.

2013

 This year, the festival theatre program will feature eight shows by the leading representatives of contemporary theatre from Germany, Norway, Belgium, Greece and Russia; the educational program will feature more than ten workshops; the special program will see the experimental Living Spaces program and several projects approaching theatrical arts ‘territory’. Along with the main festival venue, the Theatre of Nations, The TERRITORIA will host audience and participants at the spaces of the Gogol-Centre, The Platform, The Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA), the Central Museum of the Armed Forces and the Memorial House of M. Yermolova. 100 students of creating professions representing Academies, Universities etc of Russia and its Near Abroad will be selected to take part in this year educational program, which means that they will be allowed to see the entire program free of charge as well as participate in especially organized workshops. They will meet such renowned contemporary theatre personalities as Declan Donnellan (UK), Lars Øyno (Norway), Shantala Shivalingappa (India), Kirill Serebrennikov, Anatoly Smelyansky and Andrey Uraev. Special workshops and meetings will be led by the young but already successful personalities as Timofey Kulyabin, stage director, Annie Saunders, actress (USA), Ksenia Peretrukhina, set designer.

The Opening of the Festival will feature the contemporary dance star duet by the Belgian Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and the Indian dancer Shantala Shivalingappa that will perform Play where their credits include stage direction, dancing and singing. The show mixing western and eastern motives and traditions is a tribute to the legendary Pina Bausch that had brought together the two dancers and in whose dance company Shivalingappa had performed. It is expected that Rausch by the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, the forth joint production by choreographer Anouk van Dijk and director and playwright Falk Richter, will make the major event of this year’s edition of TERRITORIA. Their productions always see words and movements born on stage through improvisation, while actors and dancers form an ensemble. The action itself normally bears social and political reflection. And Rausch is no exception, as it speaks of the crisis of love in the facebook and neoliberalism era.

Lars Øyno, a Norwegian-based stage director, bringing forward the Theatre of Cruelty tradition by Antonin Artaud, will show the first ever production of The Mountain Bird, an unfinished opera libretto by Henrik Ibsen. Dimitris Papaioannou, a renowned Greek director who staged the Athens 2004 Olympics Opening Ceremony, is bringing his much-talked-of Primal Matter that raises the question of national identity through a naked male body. The Festival will also feature the latest premiers by the Theatre of Nations that in six months has managed to become a serious experimental venue for contemporary theatre, The Stone by Marius von Mayenburg directed by Philip Grigoryan, Electra directed by Timofey Kulyabin and Three Days at Hell by Pavel Pryazhko directed by Dmitry Volkostrelov. The Festival-2013 will be closed by Spring Awakening, a music show directed by Kirill Serebrennikov based on the scandalous Benjamin Franklin Wedekind’s work that will premiere at the Gogol-Centre in October.

Living Spaces, a special TERRITORIA’s project, continues to explore the laws of interaction between theatrical action and the space in which it exists. This year, three author's teams, each one including a director, an artist and a playwright, are landed in three different museums: the M. Yermolova Memorial House, the Central Museum of the Armed Forces and the MMOMA (the Moscow Museum of Modern Art) at Petrovka 25. With just a few days of rehearsals, the teams will prepare especially for the festival sketches of performances that reflect the essence of that frozen-in-time museum space. The project is curated by Marat Gatsalov, a three-time winner of the Golden Mask Award, artistic director of the Russian Theatre of Estonia in Tallinn, principal director of the New Stage of The Aleksandrinsky Theatre.

Special events of the festival will feature Ksenia Peretrukhina’s Rehearsal of Freedom exhibition at the MMOMA on Tverskaya Boulevard, 9 (which makes part of the Moscow Biennale’s program and opens on September 17), PIANO-GALA, a concert by the Diaghilev Festival, and several other events. For the updates please check our official website www.territoryfest.ru and follow us on social networks.