Allegretto Albania staged in German Biennale

TIRANA, June 23 – Allegretto Albania, a play written by Stefan Cepaliku and directed by Altin Basha represented the National Theatre of Albania for the first time in the German theatre biennale.
The play starring Mirush Kabashi, Olta Daku, Gazmend Paja was staged this week on the Mainz theatre which hosted European contemporary theatrical pieces for 10 days.
Altin Basha, who is also the director of a popular variety show in Albania, described the participation in the prestigious contemporary festival a success for the Albanian theatre.
The play was simultaneously translated into German for the audience.
The play was selected after Albania’s membership to European Theatre Convention which is financing the stage of Allegretto Albania.
“Stefan ȡpaliku has written an absurd, comic parable of post-communist life in a country, in which thousands of men are still forced to live confined to their homes because their families are feuding – for the first time, an Albanian play that was produced in Albania itself will be performed at the Theatre-Biennale,” organizers said on their website.
The play is about a man who commits murder and flees. The family he left behind is forced to hide so as not to be targeted by a vendetta. In a remote house in the Albanian mountains, a father, a mother and two sons sit and wait. A classical concert titled “Allegretto Albania” is shown on television round the clock. Volunteers from aid organizations constantly bring them useless technical equipment, and the family gathers around the kitchen table to read the criminal code every evening.
From 17-27 June 2010, the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden is hosting the Theatre-Biennale “New Plays From Europe” in Wiesbaden for the fourth time, in cooperation with the Staatstheater Mainz for the second time. The festival was founded in Bonn in 1992, the European Year, by Artistic Director Manfred Beilharz and playwright Tankred Dorst. It is the world’s only international festival to solely feature new plays from living authors.
“This festival is for authors by authors,” Wiesbaden’s artistic director Manfred Beilharz stated at the first program press conference, which was hosted by Matthias Fontheim at the Staatstheater Mainz. That is why the festival’s research relies on the help of 41 country patrons from all over Europe who are playwrights themselves. Plays will be presented at various venues throughout Wiesbaden and Mainz in the original language with a simultaneous translation into German.