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English theatre festival comes to Stockholm

This weekend sees the arrival in Sweden of theatre groups from all over Europe. For the first time in its more than thirty year history, the Festival of European Anglophone Theatrical Societies (FEATS) will be held in Stockholm.

Published: 7 May 2008 13:38 CEST

English theatre festival comes to Stockholm

The event, running from May 9th to 12th, will be hosted by Sweden’s oldest English-language amateur theatre group, The Stockholm Players.

“We’re very excited about welcoming more than 200 fellow thespians here for the first time.” said Tom Howland, The Stockholm Players chairperson, in a statement.

“However, we’re most proud of being able to offer twelve plays plus a full fringe festival to English and Swedish speaking Stockholm audiences over one weekend.”

With amateur theatre companies from twelve European countries competing for a range of awards, the festival promises plenty of drama.

British Ambassador Andrew Mitchell is the patron of the festival. As a former member of one of the German groups competing, he has first-hand knowledge of the value of the festival for engaging in cultural exchange and striking up new acquaintances.

“I’m honoured to be part of the Festival and look forward to seeing the competition” he said.

Another patron, Stockholm’s cultural commissioner, Madeleine Sjöstedt, is also eager to underline the importance of the festival.

“These types of events are very important to us in our quest to market Stockholm as the Capital of Scandinavia,” she said.

FEATS 2008 takes place from May 9th to 12th at Dieselverkstaden in Stockholm.

More information: Festival of European Anglophone Theatrical Societies

Ticket booking: Stockholm Players

Top Paris theatre reopens as Covid occupy movement ends

A picture taken on January 26, 2011 in Paris shows the facade of the Odéon theatre. LOIC VENANCE / AFP

The protesters took down the banners they had slung across the facade of the venue in the Left Bank as they left at dawn, leaving just one inscribed “See you soon”.

“We’re reopening!,” theatre director Stéphane Braunschweig exclaimed on the venue’s website, adding that it was “a relief and a great joy to be able to finally celebrate the reunion of the artists with the public.”

The Odéon, one of France’s six national theatres, was one of around 100 venues that were occupied in recent weeks by people working in arts and entertainment.

The protesters are demanding that the government extend a special Covid relief programme for “intermittents” — performers, musicians, technicians and other people who live from contract to contract in arts and entertainment.

READ ALSO: Protesters occupy French theatres to demand an end to closure of cultural spaces

With theatres shut since October due to the pandemic, the occupations had gone largely unnoticed by the general public until this week when cultural venues were finally cleared to reopen.

The Odéon, which was inaugurated by Marie-Antoinette in 1782, had planned to mark the reopening in style, by staging Tennessee Williams’ masterpiece “The Glass Menagerie”, with cinema star Isabelle Huppert as a former southern belle mourning the comforts of her youth.

But the protests scuppered the first five performances, with management saying the venue was blocked — a claim the protesters denied.

“What we wanted was for it (the performance) to go ahead, along with an occupation allowing us to speak out and hang our banners. We don’t want to stop the show,” Denis Gravouil, head of the performing arts chapter of the militant CGT union, said on Sunday.

Two other major theatres — the Colline theatre in eastern Paris and the National Theatre of Strasbourg — have also been affected by the protests.

France has one of the world’s most generous support systems for self-employed people in the arts and media, providing unemployment benefit to those who can prove they have worked at least 507 hours over the past 12 months.

But with venues closed for nearly seven months, and strict capacity limits imposed on those that reopened this week, the “intermittents” complained they could not make up their hours.

The government had already extended a year-long deadline for them to return to work by four months.

The “intermittents” are pushing for a year-long extension instead.

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