TIRANA, Feb. 12 – There have been public protests by National Theatre actors who are unhappy with a new draft law introduced by the Ministry of Culture to regulate the state-owned theatre company.
The draft law aims to temporarily relocate the theatre to a new building in the city’s outskirts while the historic downtown building is either reconstructed or torn down to be rebuilt as part of a new high-rise commercial complex.
A petition started by 74 actors reached 4,000 signatures this week.
The artists’ main concern is that the National Theatre Building will be destroyed to be redeveloped into a commercial center — a project pending since Prime Minister Edi Rama was the city’s mayor. The actors say what they have put their lives into is not valued and the government’s draft law lacks transparency.
The Independent Syndicate of Albanian Artists joined the protest this week.
They said the project was not in fact consulted with the artists, like the government claims, and added that moving the artistic troop of the National Opera and Ballet Theatre to practice in the National Theatre until the Palace of Culture is reconstructed should be objected categorically, due to the building’s old and failing structure.
“No one knows what the theatre’s fund is. There is zero transparency. The appointment of leadership in national cultural institutions should change. Politics has no say over universities, but it has over theatre, and that is absurd. We will request the parliament to make amends, as leadership should not be appointed but selected by the community,” actor Stefan Capaliku said.
During the protests, Robert Ndrenika, one of the country’s most prominent names in theatre, highlighted many additional issues actors in Albania face.
Some of them were the minimal wages, the lack of a proper theatre building that can serve as one of the city’s landmarks, gradual privatization of the artists’ property, which they fear will result in the theatre reconstruction simply serving as an excuse to build yet another high-rise building downtown.
He added that a proper national theatre should be demanded by the government from the artists.
Minister of Culture Mirela Kumbaro replied to Ndrenika’s public speech in an open letter where she agreed with the artists’ concerns, but also reminded of all artistic projects which the previous Democratic Party (DP) government never finalized, bringing according to her the degradation of the National Theatre.
“I think the community of actors should have reacted in 2008-2009, when the government decided to investment around $6 million to build a theatre inside the Pyramid, and after spending half of his amount they abandoned the project in order to utterly destroy the Pyramid in benefit of another parliamentary project, leaving us with a damaged building that needs at least $20 million to be reconstructed,” Kumbaro wrote in her letter.
She added the National Theatre will remain where it is currently located and will continue to be used until the day construction of a new theatre will begin under a governmental project, as well as invited the artists to dialogue over their concerns.
Despite Kumbaro’s statement, concerns over the draft law remain. In another public speech, actor Bujar Asqeriu gave the debate a strong political aspect, saying the main reason the theatre and actors in Albania has reached such a low standard is due to the political class’ corrupt methods, which create unequal wealth distribution and no place for the arts to develop.
Asqeriu’s cry of anger seemed to come out of ancient Greek drama as he urged God to curse all politicians and their children for what their corruption has done to Albania.
