THIS YEAR’S FESTIVAL THEME IS “FUTURE”

Cervantes says that, “If the darkness has lasted long, the sunrise is near.” The willpower to help the day rise, can only be strengthened by learning from each other, producing and evolving.Future is not a spontaneous pile of stones, it is like a monument that will rise over the stones left by the past and present. Manners, knowledges, awareness, of art, that joyfully spreading hope, sculpts the future. Subcommandante Marcos says, “EZLN appeals to the future. I know our words don’t fit today however we say them to complete an incomplete puzzle.” Essentially, answers to tomorrow’s questions are what we said today, what we produced today, what we performed today… That’s exactly why the future includes yesterday and today.When the future is something created rather than expected, both the desire to know it and the feeling afraid of it will decrease, the passion to produce and build it will increase. When we understand the present and strive to change it, the future will be more predictable. Today as well as yesterday, utopias and dystopias that prove the influence of art on stage, will be the consequence of the creative observation power that understands today, not the prophecy that produced by fortune tellers.Those looking for hope in the future will be inspired by the hopeful stories of yesterday, they will surpass today’s achievements. Those who see that dark clouds do not disperse easily and become discouraged, will get wet in the rain made by the wind blown by millions of people, and they will come to their senses.As Brecht knew and said, “The forests will grow. The fields still bear. The cities will stand.” In a year in which we started to look at the future with a little more hope in Turkey, we choose this year’s theme as FUTURE. As the Izmir branch of TAKSAV, we are now starting to receive your applications for the 12th International İzmir Theatre Festival. We await all your productions of you valuable artists who are building the future from today.