All those who were able to attend Scenofest 2007, which was held in conjunction with that year’s Prague Quadrennial, found it to be both colorful and in challenging.

Photo/R. Finkelstein

Scenofest 2011, to be held June 16 to 26, 2011 in Prague, Czech Republic, has some exciting events that will be spread throughout the historic city. Scenofest is a special project organized by OISTAT in cooperation with the Prague Quadrennial.

Scenofest 2011, led by Cindy Limauro (United States lighting designer and educator), will take over the whole of the Prague Academy of the Performing Arts near the Charles Bridge as well as specific sites in the center of Prague. It will include workshops for over 1,500 students in scenography, lighting, digital media, projections, sound design, costumes, puppetry, technical theatre, and many other disciplines. The events will include Six Acts, Street Stories, The Gift, and workshops.

Six Acts is a series of site specific spectacles in the heart of Prague created by students from all over the world led by prominent international artists. Each Act will respond to the rich history of these sites – the ordinary and the extraordinary daily life – to uncover the stories that have become lost even to the local inhabitants. Five international student teams will create a series of performances and installations over consecutive days during the Prague Quadrennial. The sixth Act will consist of a “way-finding” workshop to help audiences find the Acts and the Acts find their audiences.

Artists and groups invited to lead the Acts are: Theatre Titanick (Germany), Mapa Teatro (Columbia), Roma Patel (United Kingdom), Tomáš Žižka and Petr Matásek (Czech Republic), and Fiona Watt (United Kingdom).

Street Stories will be a series of performances created for the streets of Prague. Students will submit performances especially made for an outdoor space in Prague; performances that uncover the invisible city; costumes inspired by the invisible city; lighting that makes the invisible, visible; and sounds that reveal the hidden thoughts of the city. A public square will be designated as the site. Submissions will be based only on portable technologies. No electricity or technical support will be provided. Maximum length of performance will be 30 minutes (not including 10 minutes set up and 10 minutes strike).

The final piece is The Gift – a juried design exhibit that will use the internet to share storytelling across cultural boundaries. The notion of The Gift is about human solidarity and cosmopolitanism. It invites students to develop a performance/gesture/act based on the idea of the gift between groups of young artists from the four corners of the world using the internet as a platform of exchange. During this project, exchange teams will be chosen (based on this call for proposals), ideas formulated over a period of time and “gifts” exchanged via a designated website.

Every gift exchange that is deemed sufficiently conceptualized will be digitally exhibited at Scenofest/PQ11 and will be available on the web. This project is designed to include those who would like to participate in Scenofest but are unable to travel to Prague. Approximately 20 projects will be critiqued by a professional jury and publicly discussed over the 10 days of Scenofest, broadcast in real time via the website.

Scenofest 2011 will offer workshops in lighting, digital media, projections, sound design, costumes, puppetry, scenography, installation arts, technical theatre, crafts, dramaturgy, directing, theatre architecture, and virtual theatre. Scenofest 2011 workshops will take place in the Prague Performing Arts Academy and other specific sites in the center of Prague.

More information about Scenofest will be posted on the Scenofest/PQ website.

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