The Core Organising Team
With the arrival of the new year, it suddenly seems that the International Festival of Theatre Schools SETKÁNÍ/ENCOUNTER is getting dangerously close. (And it really is.) Three months will pass like water and the Theatre Faculty JAMU will start to fill up with foreign students, guests from different parts of Europe and, last but not least, students of JAMU. Of course, the theatres will not remain empty either. Every year the festival offers a varied program: theatre performances, parties, workshops, and discussions with the creators of individual productions or V4 discussion (the topic is the cultural and political situation in the countries of the Visegrad Group). We firmly believe that for all the participants whom we welcome to Brno, it will be a wonderful five days.
But for JAMU itself, is the festival only a five-day experience? Certainly not for students of Theatre Management and Stage Technology. Let alone for third year students of this department. Organizing the festival is one of the duties of a student of our department and for many the festival is a graduation project. It's a project they work on all year long and put a lot of time and effort into. Therefore, it is not surprising that students care about the success of the festival. Students from other JAMU departments also work at the festival and are an integral part of our extended organizational team. These departments are Dramaturgy and Directing, Audiovisual Media and Theatre, Scenography, and Radio and TV Dramaturgy and Scriptwriting. You will be able to read more about their involvement in a future article.
Each year the festival is unique. With the new edition there is always a new theme and visual, we are visited by participants from other countries, the Off-Programme offers different performers. But who brings this uniqueness to the festival? The ever-changing collective of the Core Organising Team (ÚOT). They come up with new ideas, goals and their freshly acquired knowledge and experience. And this year these people are part of that team:
Sonja Špačková – Festival Director
Gabriela Balská – Treasurer of the Festival and Head of Fundraising
Hana Kretková - Head of Guest Service, Jury, Participants
Anna Zelíková - Head of Media and Promotion
Dominika Němcová - Head of OFF programme
David Brabec - Head of Technical Support
Barbora Čechová – Head of Artistic Section
Magdaléna Bláhová - Logistics
(You can find out more about them and their section on our social media, where they are gradually being introduced these days.)
Sonja Špačková, this year's festival director, describes the position in which our third-year students find themselves every year: “The festival has a long tradition of inspiring respect. That's why I try to reflect this respect in my work, but at the same time I see the need to move the festival forward. It is a constant but sensitive approach. Which is a big challenge. On the one hand, it is educational material, but on the other hand, we are doing the festival here on the island and we have a responsibility for it. That line between student and responsible worker is sometimes not so visible and sometimes it's too visible."
We can find out what expectations the members of the ÚOT have in the answers to the following questions.
What is your relationship with the festival?
It's obviously very time consuming, throughout the course of your studies, but I feel that in your third year you are forced to find your way to it in a different way than before. I think that all of us at ÚOT take the festival as ours first and foremost, and are more motivated to tackle things related to its organization! (Hana Kretková)
A festival is like a toxic relationship: you hate the preparation for over a year, you love it during it, but you fall down with fatigue. And then you remember it with nostalgia and love how good it actually was. Especially the power of all the skilled people involved. (Anna Zelíková)
How do you work together across the ÚOT?
We are definitely all closer than we were! Thanks to Encounter, we are forced to co-exist and work things out on an almost constant basis, which helps our interplay and collaboration. (Hana Kretková)
It is sometimes amazing to see that we all come to the team with completely different experiences and often different approaches and opinions. Nevertheless, it is amazing that we have managed to get along and always pull together. (David Brabec)
What is the biggest obstacle for you?
First of all, it is the difficulties with finances. Although we want to maintain the high quality of the festival itself, there are simply areas where we have to constantly cut back and at the same time think of cheaper alternatives, which is quite creative but tiring work. (Sonja Špačková)
What do you like about the preparations or the festival itself? What is your favorite thing?
The festival week itself, when you can actually see all the work that has been done - the companies arrive, the performances take place, people from all over the world meet at the parties, and in the middle of it all are the ADPaJT students (Theatre Management and Stage Technology Department), who are just praying for a successful end! (Hana Kretková)
Even though everybody swears at the festival, they quite like it. I like those opportunities and unexpected moments that force you to react flexibly and approach a problem creatively. And also, the fact that if the team thinks of a challenge and communicates it well with the management, they can try many things... (Sonja Špačková)
I like just the fact that the festival itself is going on and that I can be part of it. Certainly, a lot of extra time has to be devoted to it, but I think that the actual benefit of the implementation is greater than any theoretical teaching. (David Brabec)
What did the festival bring or take away from you?
It has brought me a lot of new experiences, most of all this year when I am the festival's economist. It has taken a lot of my time at the expense of my studies and free time. (Gabriela Balská)
Surprisingly I get quite a lot of energy from the festival, I enjoy having the opportunity to do something that is not purely technology and it's a challenge. So, I don't know yet if it will be successful. (David Brabec)
Finally, something to amuse you: what can happen at ENC, even though it may seem impossible?
Some of the participants smoked at the hotel, continued to throw clothes out the window and played football there at night.
Some of these I can't even publish. But last year we were blocked in by a giant BMW on Schillinger Square, we couldn't get the van out. We called the police and then almost got into a fight with the driver of that BMW who was parked where he shouldn't have been and was totally over the line.
There are a lot of more or less funny coincidences and misunderstandings in the Technical Support section. For example, my colleagues tried to get a huge kitchen counter through the door of the Theatre Goose on a String. They succeeded, but this year, during a tour, we discovered a huge garage door with access directly to the stage. While they probably weren't accessible at the time, it's still amusing.
Preview photo: Daniel Burda
