MITEM is 10 years old. The history of the Madách International Theatre Meeting began in the National Theatre in the spring of 2014, and now, in spring 2024, we will open our 11th festival. In 2023, Hungary hosted one of Europe's greatest cultural / theatrical events, the 10th Theatre Olympics, with MITEM as the backbone of the programme.

On the occasion of opening the 11th MITEM, we'll look back on the past decade and the Theatre Olympics. We will launch a representative volume on the 10th Theatre Olympics and open a photo exhibition by Alessandro Serra, who will have a world premiere at this year's MITEM.

HUMAN BEING

The photos of Alessandro Serra

When I’m on tour anywhere in the world, I reserve the few hours I take away from the darkness of the theatre for wandering in the light, among people. I hide, I make myself small, I can hardly breathe, leaning against a wall so the picture doesn’t get blurred.

And so humanity exposes itself, often even seems to pose in the light.

I see a profound analogy between the lightning act of photographing a person and the long time it takes actors to distil humanity into a character.

Human Being.

Human: the human being narrating life through the semblance of reality, i.e. body, place, dress, social status.

Being: the ineffable essence of a person, the soul’s look that only art can capture.

In art as in life, form cannot be distinguished from content: form is content.

Theatre is the art of the human.

The actor is not a vehicle for any message. The actor’s only message is his Humanity.

An actor is like light, unseen, but makes people see.

Alessandro Serra

(31 March 2024)