The 28th edition of the Flora Theatre Festival will take place from 9 to 19 May 2025. Its last four days (16 to 19 May) will mostly focus on Slovak cultural scene, presenting seven theatre productions, several discussions, concerts, and a performance/installation. A key part of the dominant Slovak programme line of the 28th Flora Theatre Festival will be a profile of the Slovak National Theatre’s Drama Company. In addition to the reconstruction of a dark historical event Just Wait for It! We Are Coming for You! by Pavol Viecha and Drain, a “stage poem about the country from which one leaves” by Lukáš Brutovský, the first Slovak theatre will also present the best Slovak production of 2024 at Flora – a brilliant adaptation of Pavel Vilikovský’s essayistic novel Hound Dog directed by Dušan D. Pařízek. Petr Mankovecký Theatre from Bratislava will show their appealing site-specific project by director Alžbeta Vrzgula and co-author of the script Katarína K. Cvečková, Eden. Escape from Paradise, three times within the festival programme. The Prešov-based theatre group The Tears of Janko Borodáč will perform Outcast, a piece inspired by Zweig’s memoirs The World of Yesterday by one of the most successful Slovak directors of the last decade, Julia Rázusová. The Slovak Chamber Theatre in Martin will bring Brutovsky’s thrilling rendering of Carr’s Hecuba. The Slovak line will be crowned by the final performance/installation called IHOPEIWILL. The creative combination of the experienced choreographer Jaro Viňarský and the physically exceptionally skilled dancer Soňa Ferienčíková, who earned the threeiscompany group a DOSKY Award in the category of “Outstanding Achievement in Dance Theatre”, will become the last event of the eleven-day festival programme and the four-day Slovak focus. In the midst of escalating political tensions and growing climate problems, the symbolic finale of the 28th Flora, with the annual motto Equality, poses fundamental questions: How do we imagine the future – not only for ourselves, but also for the generations that will come after us? What kind of world will we leave to them?
Two discussions will form an integral part of the Slovak programme line. The first one, The Red-Blue-White Danube (18 May), focusing on the production of Hound Dog and the festival profile of the Slovak National Theatre’s Drama Company, will be attended by its artistic director Miriam Kičiňová and director Dušan D. Pařízek.
Next day, the discussion Lightning under the Tatras will take place in two blocks. The director Júlia Rázusová, theatrologist Dáša Čiripová, theatre-maker Šimon Ferstl, editor of the daily Respekt Jan H. Vitvar, director of the Drama Queer festival Róbert Pakan, and activist and founder of the Tepláreň club Roman Samotný will discuss the situation in Slovak independent culture and the position of minorities there. The first part of the discussion is hosted by Soňa Jánošová, editor of the daily SME, the second by reviewer Katarína K. Cvečková.
The eleven-day programme of the 28th edition of the Flora Theatre Festival, interwoven with music, workshops and discussions, artistically maps the social phenomena of our time and, thanks to many discussion formats, will lead an open conversation with the public. In addition to thousands of spectators from all over the Czech Republic and nearby abroad, as well as dozens of creators and protagonists, it will also involve university students from the FloraLab educational platform.
The motto of the 28th edition of the festival is Equality. We raise intergenerational and gender issues, thematize the position of different minorities, the issue of equal access to elementary human rights, and the ambivalence of the East-West relationship. In our four-day focus on Slovak culture, we present a highly political theatre of our neighbouring country, where the voice of independent culture is being politically silenced.
