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East Goes West with Balkan Premieres at the Gate

The Gate Theatre presents its third annual festival celebrating new work from young artists coming out of Eastern Europe. This year "East Goes West" - which runs at the fringe venue in Notting Hill, west London, from 19 June to 14 July 2001 - focuses on the Balkans, with shows from Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Macedonia.

According to the festival's promotional material, ten years after modern Balkan hostilities erupted, "in Sofia, Novi Sad, Skopje, Tirana and Pristina, young artists are questioning the present, digesting the past and dreaming the future. For them...the theatre remains the essential expression of what it means to be alive."

The East Goes West schedule includes the Gate's first international co-production. Staged with art&scena from Sofia in Bulgaria, The Battle depicts seven individual battles been mind and body. Would you eat your brother if you stomach was empty? The cast includes four Bulgarian and two British actors. Dimitar Nedkhov directs the play by Heiner Muller, which runs at the Gate from 19 to 30 June.

Other festival productions are: from Yugoslavia, Ratko Radivojevic's The End of the 20th Century, a musical and theatrical extravaganza for eight actors and a muscle man seeking human perfection; and from Macedonia, Teki Dervishi's Paradise Tomorrow, which sets the dreams of a Pristina poet against the grim realities of war in Kosovo.

In addition to the three main productions, the East Goes West festival includes numerous meetings, discussions and workshops with the artists and their companies. For further information, contact the Gate box office on +44-20-7229-5387.

- by Terri Paddock

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