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Final Performance of New Drama Festival 2019

By Mariam Chanishvili
Friday, Setember 20
“There are works and there are characters that we deify and worship, but we don't know them…” - reads the annotation of the final performance of the New Drama Festival 2019.

The performance took place on September 15.

This time Paata Tsikolia staged the cult work for Georgians, The Knight in the Panther's Skin, ‘Vepkhistkaosani’. Since Paata Tsikolia's new work combines two stories, it has two titles: "The Story of the Ring and the Cut Off Finger/ The Story of the Red Tents."

The artistic team consists of Tamriko Okhikiani, Natia Bunturi, and Anushka Chkheidze. The actors and artists participating in the project include Iako Tchilaia, Gaga Shishinashvili, Eto Aleksashvili, Giorgi Tsereteli.

Paata Tsikolia transformed the old drama into a new, contemporary theater language, which was revealed not only in the text itself but also in its visual solution.

The authorial text, which is written in a dialogue form, is effective and dynamic, containing intrigue and opposing the two positions.

The Knight in the Panther's Skin (literally "one with a skin of a tiger") is a Georgian medieval epic poem, written in the 12th century by the Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli. A definitive work of the Georgian Golden Age, the poem consists of over 1600 Rustavelian Quatrains and is considered to be a masterpiece of the Georgian literature.

New Drama Festival is the joint platform for dramaturgy and performance art, aiming to promote and develop art experiment, free and alternative creative processes in Georgia.

New Drama Festival aims to create modern art experience tailored to time, as for the authors based in Georgia as well as for those people for whom the art is the space for free self-expression, reflection, and critical research.

With parallel programs, Festival hosts the various creative-theatrical unions, musicians and artists, sharing the views of the New Drama Festival.