Controversial performance

Georgian theatrical society has been agitated for some time for two main reasons. Well-known Georgian theatre director Keti Dolidze, founder of the Gift international theatre festival which has received international recognition and been held regularly in Tbilisi for more than 10 years has been dismissed from her post of Artistic Director of the Tumanishvili Theatre. The Tbilisi Municipality has also initiated a new international festival which will be held in October, the same month in which the Gift festival had been regularly held. Dolidze thinks that this is being done deliberately to undermine Gift festival and replace it.

The advantage of the Gift festival was the fact that none of the actors and actresses acted for pay. As one of the directors of the Gift festival, British director Hilary Wood, mentioned in an open letter to President Saakashvili, “We did it for the love of Georgia and never took any form of payment.”

Dolidze mentioned that the new festival has a substantial budget. In a press conference held yesterday she told media representatives what the event was really about. She expressed her curiosity as to how a country in such a dire situation, recovering from the world crisis and the war with Russia, can afford to spend several hundred thousand dollars creating a new festival to compete with the previous one.