Homecoming

This year’s festival takes place from June 9–16, 2023 in Prilep. Apart from the stages in Vojdan Chernodrinski National Theater in Prilep and Marko Cepenkov Culture Center in Prilep, several Festival zones are to be opened in several places around the city.

The program is titled Homecoming, with the aim of the festival to symbolically and practically bring home all theater artists, and the city of Prilep to be a proper host city.

The festival is to offer educational workshops for the youngest and video presentations on four major topics: on Vojdan Chernodrinski, the theater artist; on Vojdan Chernodrinski Festival; on the arts represented in theater art; and on the playwrights; and there will be some more programs offered, like the monthly contribution dedicated to the festival, and various more activities related to assigned topics presented every 27^th of the month. For the first time this year, the festival introduces the Author in Focus program – this year is Kole Chashule, whose play A Twig in the Wind(Вејка на ветрот), premiered in Prilep in 1957, marks the modern Macedonian dramaturgy. In cooperation with the City Library, the Collection of the Homeland Writers (Роднокрајна збирка) is to be launched and the Prilep authors and their influence on contemporary Macedonian theater will be presented. The festival aims to be a base/network of contemporary theater practice, to stimulate, encourage, develop, and upgrade the theater in Macedonia. The artistic director will make a selection in three categories plus one unselected.

The festival’s program is an active, everyday, and creative process with Chernodrinski for Kids morning program, Round Table Discussions, Theater and Theatrical Literature Promotion, Podcast Afternoon Matinee (interviews, conversations, and lectures), Workshops with the Actors, and evening performances. The artistic director’s idea is for the festival to be ongoingly live, and for all guests to be guests of the festival during those 8 days. Hence, theater artists will have the opportunity to hang out, network, exchange experiences, and, thus, contribute to even better theater practice.

The festival is “green (eco)” and aims to raise awareness of the socially responsible position in the current period and to be up-to-date in a wider context. Several exhibitions are to take place at the festival and, for the first time, an Audio Room is introduced, where one can listen to samples of the music of the theater performances.The festival appoints Prilep Theater actors to host the festival, and hires volunteers, as well, to make the city a complex, creative, and theatrical universe.