Bergama Theater Festival to open in June

ISTANBUL

The third Bergama Theater Festival is preparing to open the curtain between June 2 and 5 in İzmir with the organization of 3dots and BERaBER as a sustainable, sharing and transforming festival.

Organized with the support of the Culture and Tourism Ministry, the İzmir Metropolitan Municipality, the Bergama Municipality, BERKSAV, the Bergama Chamber of Commerce and the Ne Yerde Ne Gökte Association, the festival invites the audiences to get lost in the historical streets of Bergama and to meet with new stories.

This Bergama Theater Festival, organized since 2018, draws attention to the importance of coming together, meeting and sharing new stories under the conditions of the climate crisis, war and the pandemic that the world is struggling with.

For this purpose, the festival will go out of the center for the first time, with activities to be held in neighborhoods, villages and streets it was not organized before.

The festival, which is organized around the themes of Localization, Sectorization, Accessibility of Social and Cultural Life and Participation of Children and Youth in Cultural and Artistic Life, works with non-governmental organizations in the region and a team mostly from Bergama. It contributes to the industrialization processes by bringing together amateur and professional theater producers and aims to open up space for less represented producers, audiences and practitioners.

Cultural heritage meets with festival

The ancient city of Bergama, which served as the capital of the empire in its history of more than 2,500 years, is on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Having one of the largest libraries of the Hellenistic period, Bergama is considered one of the most important ancient cities in the world with its history that has survived until today.

The festival celebrates Bergama’s deep-rooted theater tradition, its passion for literature strong enough to introduce its parchment paper to the world, its achievements in the fields of health, science and architecture, and this heritage of universal value through performing arts and an event program consisting of multidisciplinary workshops, panels and marches.

At the same time, the festival program prioritizes the city’s historical relationship with the German city of Berlin due to the Zeus Altar’s journey that ended at the Berlin Pergamon Museum and creates a special experience area in the unique atmosphere of Bergama.