Sibiu International Theater Festival opens this weekend with host of international guests

The Sibiu International Theater Festival will open June 9, bringing 3,200 artists and guests to the central Romania city, with a selection of over 500 performances and events, produced in 70 countries from all over the world. Our Theatre & Ryuzanji Company from China and Japan will present a performance that places Shakespeare in a contemporary Asian setting. Titled Macbeth: Paint it, Black!, the Chinese-Japanese production opens with an anti-war monologue and ends with the suggestion of cultivating hope against the endless struggle for power. Teatrul Maghiar de Stat Cluj will bring to the festival The Lower Depth s, a play by Maxim Gorki, directed by the famous Russian-born theatre actor and director Yuri Kordonsky. The play depicts, almost literally, a world on the brink of collapse, and asks the question of how far can humanity go before it ceases to exist. Circa Contemporary Circus from Australia will come to Sibiu with the performance Humans, directed by Yaron Lifschitz. It features ten acrobats leading the public through a journey of what it means to be human. The Sibiu festival will dedicate this year four days to one of the greatest circus artists in the world, David Dimitri (pictured). He will feature in Circus Man, a contemporary circus show created and performed by a single artist, with no animals and no other stage support, an innovative combination of acrobatics, high wire, musical and trapeze moments. This edition of the festival will feature organ concerts in several fortified churches in Transylvania. Amalia Goje, a founding member of the Baroque music band Fonte di Gioia will perform at the Evangelical Church in Cisnădie (Heltau). Noémi Miklós, a member of the chamber music band Flauto Dolce, will hold a performance at the Evangelical Church in Cisnădioara (Michelsberg). The Capella Coronensis & The Bach Youth Choir of the Black Church will hold a concert at the Criț Fortified Church, while organist Jürg Leutert from Switzerland will perform at the Evangelical Church in Guşteriţa (Hammersdorf). At the same time, in the Evangelical Church in Roşia (Rothberg), will present all the sound capabilities of the organ. Although not a fortified church, the Evangelical Church of Slimnic (Stolzenburg) will also accommodate a concert of the organ player Ursula Philippi and the violinist Roxana Bârsan. Additional performance have been added for several plays that were in high demand. Two of these are Metamorphoses directed by Romanian Silviu Purcărete and MAL/PRAXIS, the most recent production of Bogdan Georgescu. The full program of the festival can be checked