TIRANA, June 30 – After last year’s absence due to lack of financial support, the Butrint international theatre festival, will make its comeback this month to mark its 13th edition but with a limited number of shows due to ongoing problems with funding.
Alfred Bualoti, the festival’s director, says this year’s edition scheduled to be held from July 18 to 22 at the amphitheatre of the UNESCO World Heritage site of Butrint will showcase only three performances by foreign theatres,
“The festival’s 13th edition will bring on stage five performances from Italy, Bulgaria, Macedonia and two from Albania which will be represented with The True Apology of Socrates monodrama by veteran actor Mirush Kabashi and Sophocles’ Electra directed by Laert Vasili,” says Bualoti.
The festival’s director says this year’s festival can be considered as a sacrifice by the artists as the festival managed to raise only 10,000 euros in funding from the Culture Ministry which ruined organizers’ plans to have 10 to 12 shows.
Back in 2014 the festival was cancelled due to lack of financial support
In 2013, five international theatre companies from the United States, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria and Ukraine will be participating in the 12 edition of the Butrint International Theatre Festival which returned after a two-year absence.
The Butrint 2000 is an annual theatre festival that takes place on a historic site in the ancient Albanian town of Butrinti, on the shore of Lake Butrint. The festival started in 2000 and has presented works by Albanian artists, as well as more than 50 companies coming from Greece, Italy, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro, Poland, Romania, The Netherlands, U.K., U.S., France, Russia, Sweden etc. The festival is also an initiative to promote cultural tourism in Albania, and Butrint, the largest Albanian archeological park, which has been under UNESCO protection since the early 1990s after the collapse of communist regime.
The ancient city of Butrint, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1992, has been recommended as a top European destination for a second time this year in the UK, this time by prestigious British newspaper The Guardian.
“Very few visitors, and stunning ancient Greek, Roman, Frankish and Ottoman remains,” is what led The Guardian and its readers’ travel tip rank Butrint as one of Europe’s top 10 national parks.
“It is a must-see for fans of ancient history; it boasts a number of significant archaeological sites and is considered a “microcosm of Albanian history,” says The Guardian in its online version about the park located in southernmost Albania.
Earlier this year, The Culture Trip, a UK-based one-stop digital platform for global culture and lifestyle, suggested Butrint as one of the “top 12 historical destinations in Europe you didn’t know about.”
Inhabited since prehistoric times, Butrint has been the site of a Greek colony, a Roman city and a bishopric. Following a period of prosperity under Byzantine administration, then a brief occupation by the Venetians, the city was abandoned in the late middle Ages after marshes formed in the area. The present archaeological site is a repository of ruins representing each period in the city’s development.
Excavations have brought the light to many objects – plates, vases, ceramic candlesticks – as well as sculptures including a remarkable ‘Goddess of Butrint’ which seems to completely embody, in the perfection of its features, the Greek ideal of physical beauty.
