Students from Asia and Latin America to present their plays at festival in Russia

From 14 to 30 April, Moscow will host the international festival of student plays “Your Chance/GITIS fest”. This is a platform where young actors and directors from different countries demonstrate their graduation works. TV BRICS is the international media partner of the event.

The festival will unite students from Russia, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region. The audience will see dozens of productions in which theatre schools from Kazakhstan, China, India, Brazil, and Chile will take part.

Russian Minister of Culture Olga Lyubimova expressed confidence in the success of the festival. According to her, this is an important platform for young talents, which allows them to demonstrate their achievements at the international level.

The performances will take place on the stages of the Educational Theatre of the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts – GITIS, the The Theatre Centre of the STD of the Russian Federation "On Strastnoy" and the Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute at the State Academic Theatre named after Evgeny Vakhtangov.

Grigory Zaslavsky, Rector of GITIS, said that the festival's organisers had built the concept of international cooperation into the festival. He is also convinced that student productions are not just educational works, but an expression of a new theatre language.

"Student productions allow us to fantasise about what the theatre of the future - tomorrow's theatre – will be like, but also what it will be like in 10, 20 or more years' time," Zaslavsky stressed.

At a press conference on the festival, Huang Changyong is the Vice Chairman and President of Shanghai Theatre Academy, said the institution will present two productions – from the acting and directing departments.

"This year, Shanghai Academy of Drama is celebrating its 80th anniversary. Back in the last century, we actively cooperated with Soviet art institutes. The Russian theatre school has had a huge influence on us, so we have strong relations with GITIS, which have become a reliable foundation for the development of bilateral cooperation," he said.  

"Your Chance/GITIS fest" is a cultural project aimed at sharing professional experience. In the Theatre Centre of the STD of the Russian Federation "On Strastnoy" from 14 to 30 April will be shown 17 performances of Russian universities, and from 21 to 30 April GITIS will present 10 productions, 6 of which – foreign.

Photo: "Your Chance/GITIS fest"