May 1-5, 2024: SKEPSIS represents Alba Iulia at an important and unique international theater festival organized in Tunisia

SKEPSIS represents Alba Iulia at an important and unique international theater festival organized in Tunisia!

Between May 1-5, 2024, the Skepsis theater company is among the theaters and theater companies from 24 countries participating in the 4th edition of the SAHARA International Theater Festival, organized in Tunisia.

The event proposes 5 days in which artists from 24 countries will present 34 performances and offer the audience and participants 11 training workshops in a dream setting: the dunes of the Sahara desert, Jersine, Qibli region, Tunisia.

The Skepsis group was invited to represent Romania with the show “Cine-i Stăpânul?”, an original show created by Viorel Cioflică in the genre of Commedia dell Arte, a genre of theater that the troupe from Alba Iulia has been practicing successfully in the last decade. At the request of the organizers, the Skepsis group coordinator will hold a training workshop on theater improvisation during the event.

Read also: May 19 – 25, 2024 – “Povești” International Theater Festival, in Alba Iulia. PROGRAM of the 17th edition: Theater performances, musicals, book launches, exhibitions and creative workshops

“Participation in this event certifies the band’s professionalism, the group’s creative potential and the good reputation we enjoy internationally. The show proposed by us has been played successfully in the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Germany and Greece and now it will also reach Tunisia. We can only be grateful to the experts who initiated us years ago into the secrets of this kind of theater that our troupe approaches respecting its authenticity and fundamental principles.

Every international participation is an opportunity to promote our city and country, to learn and pass on what we know. We are honored by the invitation received and will repay the trust of the organizers. It’s a shame to talk in the desert, but it’s a real joy to be able to play theater there!” – Viorel Cioflica.

The event is the result of a cultural project initiated and coordinated by director Hafedh Khalifa, being organized by Tunisian state institutions and civil organizations: the Ministry of Youth and Sports; National Tourism Office; National Foundation for the Development of Cultural Events; National Heritage Agency; Kebili National Delegation for Cultural Affairs; Ministry of Family, Women, Children and the Elderly; Jersine Cultural Hope Association.

“The specificity of this festival is that it is an event that reaches an audience and not an event that waits for an audience. A large audience awaits us year after year. I would say that our target audience is the main source of demand and energy for this event. We challenge participating bands to leave conventional spaces and present their performances in a dream theater where ordinary stages and halls are replaced by desert sand and sky. The natural environment is an important element that we promote, the project linking population, culture and ecotourism. Here the usual theatrical approaches are forced to transform and the actors are forced to find new forms of expression.” – Hafedh Khalifa (Organizer)

The event is intercultural and promotes the exchange of experience between the participating artists, exponents of different arts. Theatre, poetry, dance, literature and music are present in the festival by famous personalities from the contemporary cultural and artistic universe of the Arab and Mediterranean area.

As always, the Skepsis group respects the international character of the event as well as the specifics of the social and cultural space in which it takes place, so that, in agreement with the organizers, the show “Who’s the Master” is prepared and will be presented during the festival in French.