11th Hwaseong International Theater Festival to be Held Aug. 16-25

The ‘2007 Suwon Hwaseong International Theater Festival,’ marking its 11th edition this year, will be held for ten days from August 16 to 25 at the Suwon Youth Culture Center, KBS Drama Center performance hall, Hwaseong Haenggung Palace, Jangan Park, and other venues.

This year’s festival will feature a joint performance by South Korea and the Netherlands, seven foreign official invited works submitted from France, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, and other countries, a total of three domestic official invited works, and two environmental theater productions jointly organized with the Korean Directors Association.

The City of Suwon and the Hwaseong International Theater Festival Executive Committee held a promotion briefing on the 23rd at the City Hall situation room, covering the festival schedule, promotion direction, work selection, and composition.

The city and executive committee, marking the 10th anniversary of Hwaseong Haenggung Palace’s designation as a World Cultural Heritage site, plan to actively adopt the multi-genre characteristics typical of contemporary performing arts to establish the identity of the Suwon Hwaseong International Theater Festival through specialization, differentiation, and distinction of the festival.

Accordingly, this year’s Suwon Hwaseong International Theater Festival will induce geographic concentration of festival performance spaces to form a ‘belt line’ between the main performance venues and special performance spaces, and will pursue heightened completeness through performances of carefully selected domestic and international works to leap to an international-scale art festival.

In particular, the festival plans to develop environmental theater that actively utilizes Hwaseong Fortress and Paldalsan, and to attempt diverse multi-genre and post-genre performances using sound, light, movement, and objects to differentiate itself from Gwacheon Hanmadang Festival and Chuncheon Mime Festival.

Additionally, the festival plans to expand collaborative projects involving networking and work exchange with renowned domestic and international festivals, and to launch a ‘young actor re-education workshop program’ for next-generation performing artists.

Kim Jung-su, director of the Culture and Tourism Division, said, “We will develop the 2007 Suwon Hwaseong Theater Festival, which has grown beyond ten years, into an event that leads the flow of performing arts anew by utilizing diverse performance languages based on the cultural and historical identity of Hwaseong Haenggung Palace.”

Meanwhile, the city plans to recruit volunteers to participate during the festival period from July 1 to 31.