Who Is Part of the Main Programme?

The name of the International Festival of Theatre Schools SETKÁNÍ/ENCOUNTER doesn't include the word international for nothing, so this article will explain how students from foreign schools become part of the festival. Specifically, I am referring to the process of selecting from among the schools which apply and our methods of communication with them. The productions that each school brings to Brno for the main programme of our festival, and we are looking forward to seeing them. But now let's take a look at the work behind all the performances to make sure they come off without any major complications. We can look at the whole process from three sides: production, technical, and artistic.

The production part is the first to play a role in the whole process of festival preparation. This part is taken care of by the Guest service, Jury, Participants section, which works with our internal database of 350 schools from 76 different countries. This database needs to be updated every year. This generally means that we are actively searching 350 websites and checking contact details. In addition to this, we also prepare an application form together with the Technical Support section. After that we start sending out invitations and information on how to apply. Before the festival, we arrange accommodation for the participants, provide production support in the theatres, and during the festival we provide guides.

The guides’ work starts when each member of the section chooses one or two schools before the festival. They are then on hand during the week for those schools should they need to sort something out. It all starts with the guides meeting the assigned school and escorting them to the Festival Infocenter. After that, they can go check into their hotel. Guides don't have to be with their participants 24/7, but they are available to them in case of need. At the theatres, guides are on standby in case anything needs to be communicated with the theatre staff or the technicians who are assisting with the preparations of the performances in question.

This brings us to the next part, the technical part. This is because once the applications have all been received, the Technical Support section becomes involved throughout, and its members have to carefully go through each application and then contact the schools if anything is unclear. Once the individual productions are selected, this section continues to take care of them from a technical point of view throughout the preparation and during the festival week. It acts as a liaison between the venues’ technicians and the technicians of each visiting school. Each school often has quite different requirements in terms of set, and our technicians try to accommodate everyone as far as possible. Much of this work consists of communicating through a variety of channels to find out all the information about the sets: lighting, sound, projection, set construction, and size. During the festival, our technicians are in the theatres helping with preparations. They know what tech needs to be provided as well as which theatre technicians are needed at the time. In short, they try to keep everyone happy and everything running smoothly.

During the actual selection of productions, the cooperation between the technical and production components of the whole process is crucial - in our case between the head of the Technical Support section, David Brabec, and the head of the Guest service, Jury, Participants section, Hana Kretková. Together, they worked on the preparation of the application form and also discussed, with the entire artistic section, what the procedure for selecting productions would be. During the selection process, care had to be taken to ensure that the productions would be viable in the theatres available to us for the duration of the festival. Therefore, it was important that our technicians know all the festival venues in detail and allocate each production to the appropriate theatre. And at this stage, we could not leave out the selection process, where the relevant teachers and students came together to discuss and vote on which shows would be chosen for this year's festival. The Technical Support, Guest service, Jury, Participants and the Artistic Section all had their say on each production.

This brings us to the third component of the whole process, the artistic one. The Artistic Section focuses primarily on the artistic qualities of the productions submitted and whose records are available to it. Each production is evaluated both on a point scale and in words. In the evaluation, the students focused on the overall quality of the production, on the performances of the individual artists and creators, but also, for example, on the social relevance of the production's subject matter. Furthermore, the level of student involvement in the production was also taken into account, as we always try to select productions in which students are mainly responsible for directing, writing, designing, etc. The overall balance in terms of genre and geography was also important.

This intricate process of selection and communication with schools continues throughout the academic year. During the fall, all the schools were first contacted and slowly began to apply. After the application process closed in December, preparations for the selection process followed in January. And then we started intensive communication with the selected schools. At the end of this whole intricate process, productions from 9 countries await us at the 34th International Festival of Theatre Schools SETKÁNÍ/ENCOUNTER 2024:

anytime, anywhere – Theatre faculty, Academy of Performing Arts (Prague, Czech Republic) 

As We Were – Max Reinhardt Seminar, University of Music and Performing Arts (Vienna, Austria) 

Not Found – Academy Dimitri (Verscio, Switzerland) 

Hello Out There! – Latvian Academy of Culture (Riga, Latvia) 

Psychosis 4:48 – Faculty of Dramatic Arts (Belgrade, Serbian) 

Benzin – Kyiv National I. K. Karpenko-Karyi University of Theatre, Cinema and Television (Kyiv, Ukraine) 

Martýr – Theatre faculty, Academy of Performing Arts (Bratislava, Slovakia) 

Songs to the Gods of the World – AST National Academy of Theatre Arts (Krakow, Poland) 

The Image of a Woman/Origin of Clouds – Theatre faculty, Janáček Academy of Performing Arts (Brno, Czech Republic)