Due to a continuous decrease in funding by the Federal Ministry of Culture and Sports, the Office of the International Theatre Festival MESS will hold a protest performance of artists and friends of the Festival on Friday, October 4th in the National Theatre Sarajevo at 8 pm. This performance will take place instead of the previously planned performance “Chekhov’s First Play” from Ireland, which was meant to be the closing performance of the Festival.
Through this performance, we will remind ourselves of the words from Festival Director Nihad Kreševljaković at the opening of MESS on September 28th 2019:
“The performance “Chekhov’s First Play” by Irish company Dead Centre, based in Dublin, which was supposed to be the closing performance for this year’s MESS Festival, will not be performed this year due to a decision by the Federal Ministry of Culture and Sports to reduce funding. For this reason, the MESS Festival Office had agreed with the jury members to hold the award ceremony next year, one day before the start of the 60th milestone edition of MESS Festival, when we will close the 59th Festival, only after we all see this play too. And we will!”, as noted by Kresevljakovic.
The Festival Office would like to invite the MESS audience to join us, and by coming to support the oldest theatre festival in the region.
