We are halfway through FITS 2025. On Tuesday, the audience enjoyed shows by Neil LaBute, Radu Afrim, Alexis Michalik, Gravity & Other Myths
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Tuesday started out with the Performing Arts Market, with a session dedicated to European festivals. The representatives of the most important performing arts festivals in the world – Avignon, Edinburgh, and Sibiu – discussed the challenges of organising big cultural events in the current global context.
Vicențiu Rahău (Operations & Programming director at FITS), Harold David (co-chairman, Avignon Festival & Compagnies, France), Roy Luxford (creative director, Edinburgh International Festival, United Kingdom), and Octavian Saiu (president of the International Association for Theatre Leaders), cultural and academic consultant, and coordinator of the FITS conferences) took part in a discussion moderated by Professor Cosmin Chivu.
Alexis Michalik – playwright, director, actor, screenwriter, film director, and writer – was in dialogue with journalist Mihaela Dedeoglu, as part of the FITS special conferences. The artist was invited at the Festival to present Intra Muros, which has already been performed two thousand times, in France and in tens of other cities in the world. At FITS, the show was performed to a sold-out house at Filarmonica de Stat Sibiu.
Uncle Vanya, staged at Radu Stanca National Theatre by the famous director and playwright Neil LaBute, enjoyed two performances that were much appreciated by the audience, one of which ended well after midnight. Both performances enjoyed many rounds of applause.
Herbarium by Simona Popescu and Radu Afrim, which won a UNITER award, has fascinated the audience with a poetical stage design in a fantasy world. The hall was packed at Ion Besoiu Cultural Centre, despite the show being added to the FITS programme only one week earlier.
At Fabrica de Cultură, eight world class acrobats from the Australian company Gravity & Other Myths offered a stunning show, a celebration of the commitment required to accomplish such physical feats.
Fabrica de Cultură (Faust Hall) also hosted the first performance of the show Macbeth, directed by Johan Simons, a production by Schauspielhaus Bochum in Germany.
In the evening, the Large Square was lighted up by Evanescent by Night, an immersive, light and sound installation that aims to capture the concept of ephemerality and transience in a visual form.
At the same time, Nicolae Bălcescu Pedestrian Street was animated by Cie Kervan with their show Haliad, a mesmerizing travelling show inspired by the mysterious depths of the ocean, where untold legends are born.