Teatro Festival Parma – Meeting Europeo dell’Attore was founded in 1983 taking up the tradition of the historical Festival Universitario di Parma, wich had had 21 editions until 1975. Teatro Festival Parma is the annual meeting of European and International Theatre, dedicated to presenting and analyzing new themes and arguments: the main issue is the spectacular event, accompanied by conventions, round-tables, debates that provoke and follow the movements of ideas across European theatre together with the Italian one. If the very first editions of the Festival were oriented towards the “insiders”, throughout the years the attention focused on students and professors, theatre schools, directors, playwrights and actors of Italian and European theatre. In the recent years, a wider interest and participation by the public guaranted a deep rooting of the Festival in Parma and in Italy. In the sixteen editions the Teatro Festival parma had until 1998, it affirmed itself as one of the most important cultural events in Europe, strengthening artistic relationships with the world major theatres and with important European institutions. Teatro Festival Parma achieved the Prize of the Italian Theatre Critics Association, and described as “the only event in Italy that succeeded in crossing the useless borders between traditional and experimental theatre, between singular research and extended productive centres with State funds, and choosing according to intelligence, competence and accuracy criteria”. In the last editions the Festival has been focused on the multidisciplinarity and it grew larger in order to host dance, music, literature, exhibitions, debates and meetings together with prose theatre. It proposes as a cultural event able to put together great themes (Füssli and Shakespeare in 1997, jewish culture in 1998), with the participation of a wide audience and with an insider reflection into the theatre professionism.
Among the guests presented in Parma – for the first time in Italy – and became history of the Festival:
Schaubühne (Berlin), Comédie Française, Schauspielhaus (Colon), Theater Am Turm (Frankfurt), Théâtre National de Strasbourg, Bayerisches Staatschaulspielhaus (Munich), Stary Teatr (Cracow), Theater Im Palast (Berlin), Théâtre Varia (Bruxelles), MC93 de Bobigny, Dramaten (Stockolm), Théâtre National Populaire, Schiller Theatre, Berliner Ensemble, Katona Josef (Budapest), Vakhtangov (Moscow), Villeurbane T.N.P., Needcompany, Theatre de Complicité, Cheek by Jowl.
Among the most important artists who were present in the Festival:
Pina Bausch, Peter Stein, Heiner Müller, Michel Vinaver, Valère Novarina, Klaus Grüber, Roberto Ciulli, Arnold Wesker, Jacques Lassalle, Joseph Chaikin, Ekkehard Schall, Barbara Brecht, Jérôme Deschamps, Herbert Achternbusch, David Warrilow, Bernhard Minetti, Manfred Karge, Alvis Hermanis, Gildas Bourdet, Mechtild Grossman, Alain Cuny, Andreij Wajda, Jerzy Stuhr, Anatolij Vassiliev, Maria Casarès, Ingmar Bergman, Georges Lavaudant, Jean Pierre Vincent, Matthias Langhoff, Piotr Fomenko, Silviu Purcarete, Eimuntas Nekrosius, Fiona Shaw, Edith Clever, Abraham B. Yehoshua, Declan Donnellan, André Wilms, Heiner Goebbels, Angela Winkler, Guido Ceronetti, Vincenzo Cerami, Gianni Celati, Stefano Benni, Andrea Zanzotto, Edoardo Sanguineti, Vittorio Sermonti.