During the state of emergency caused by the outbreak of COVID-19, Bitef Theatre has launched a digital edition of the Philosophical Theatre. Every Thursday in April, at 8pm, Bitef Theatre YouTube channel will broadcast live discussions with eminent Bitef Theatre artists.
After the successful discussions with the theatre director Oliver Frljić (Zagreb), and the theatre director and former Bitef curator Anja Suša (Stockholm), next are the meetings with the famous names of the contemporary theatre, whose performances we had an opportunity to see at the last-year’s Bitef - Milo Rau (Brussels) and Stefan Kaegi (Berlin). The discussions will be, like in the “good old times”, moderated by Srećko Horvat and Maja Pelević, while the viewers will have an opportunity to ask them questions.
Philosophical Theatre is a project initiated with an idea to re-establish a close relationship between philosophy and theatre. Launched at the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb in 2014, the program has been a part of the Bitef Theatre repertory since the season 2019/20. It tackles the most relevant questions of the present moment and the problem of the societies we live in.
As the initiator Srećko Horvat states, “the link between philosophy and theatre has always been much stronger than the link between philosophy and any other medium or art”. Theatre has always been a place for active deliberation of society and social processes, and Philosophical Theatre creates a space for public discussion, which is nowadays more than necessary.
In that respect, Horvat remarks: “In times of a global pandemic, when all of us are trapped at our homes and made vigilant about keeping distance, we need social interconnectedness and critical thinking more than ever. For the time being, Philosophical Theatre persists through different channels, until we - hopefully soon - get back to theatre! The return to the ‘good all days’ will never happen anyway, because the old days were never good in the first place. We are facing a difficult but necessary task of radically rethinking and reinventing the world over.”
