From free to fee

In 2011, a UK theatre company, Imitating the Dog (ITD), successfully toured South Caucasus with its innovative work Hotel Methuselah, after colleagues from Georgia and Armenia had pitched it during the Edinburgh Showcase in 2010. Since then, we have been trying to find a good reason to bring the company back so it could work with local artists on a co-production or re-staging of any of its work. ITD performs quite differently from contemporary Georgian theatre, which favours script and live emotions over modern technology.

Given how difficult it is to persuade Georgian government and businesses to invest in arts and creative industries, it is a miracle that the Georgian re-staging of ITD’s The Zero Hour has seen the light of day. Thid innovative production premiered at Batumi State Musical Centre on 5 February 2015 and was seen by 3,000 people.

"I am proud," Giorgi Tavamaishvili, Minister of Education, Culture and Sports of Ajara, told us on the opening night. "This performance was beyond my expectations. Thanks to you there’s new hope for Georgian theatre", said Ana Riaboshenko, curator of the Contemporary Arts Centre in Batumi.

What’s new in this for Georgian theatre professionals? Framed as a film that is being directed by a famous film director and a crew of five people, The Zero Hour fuses live action with pre-recorded film, animation and computer generated imagery to create a world where human relations are placed at the heart of historical events. This is a completely new experience for Georgian theatre, which has never experimented with the interrelationship between theatre and cinema.

As for ITD, despite its touring geography and innovative experience, the company has learned how two different cultures and theatre ethics work and cohabitate, and how innovation can be enriched with acting- and performance-focused theatre traditions.

Understandably, bringing the original co-production to Georgia would be much simpler, but we wanted to use ITD’s innovative experience to develop local theatre practitioners. This is not a show just for one theatre or one company. It’s a collaborative developmental opportunity for the wider performing arts sector in Ajara, including Batumi Musical Centre and Batumi State Drama.

We also believe the performance has a great potential for touring, so the immediate plan is to present it at Tbilisi International Theatre Festival, followed by other festivals and venues within Georgia and internationally.

This blog is by Eka Patsatsia, Marketing and Communications Co-ordinator, Georgia, and Eka Patsatsia Volodymyr Sheyko, Regional Marketing and Communications Manager, British Council Georgia.