Βy Katerina Delikonstantinidou* and Anna Gkouva**
When the present festival guide was first launched, a concise reference book about international festivals devoted to the work of theatre and the performing arts was yet to be found. In the years that intervened, the marked increase of festivals taking place around the world—a phenomenon that can be partly attributed to what cultural critics call the increasing “festivalization” of public cultures—was accompanied by a multiplication of relevant listings.
Still, we take pride in playing host to one of the most user-friendly and comprehensive, if not the most comprehensive, records of all the important international theatre and performing arts festivals out there. Our “International Theatre and Performing Arts Festival Guide” is renewed and expanded with each issue of Critical Stages, in a consistent effort to respond to the ever-present need for a handy vade mecum of international theatre and performing arts festivals.
The entries, as one can see below, are tabulated chronologically; an arrangement which aims at facilitating the theatergoer, or just the traveler, to spot the event more easily. Each entry includes information regarding the place (city and country) of occurrence, the electronic address of the festival, as well as contact information (where available) and some keywords roughly describing its main focus, thus providing a brief yet succinct account of every festival in the guide.
An alternative, world map-based version of our guide can be accessed here.
*Katerina Delikonstantinidou holds a PhD in Theatre Studies from the School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She has recently completed her state-funded postdoctoral research on the uses of digital theatre in adult education, under the aegis of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, where she also works as adjunct lecturer. She has been a member of the web team for and a regular contributor to Critical Stages since 2014. Her first monograph, titled Latinx Reception of Greek Tragic Myth: Healing (and) Radical Politics was published by Peter Lang in 2020. Her research areas include Theatre and Performing Arts, Greek Tragedy, Ethnic Studies, Digital Literacies and Education.
**Anna Gkouva holds a BA Honours in English Language and Literature and an MA in English and American Studies from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She is currently teaching English as a foreign language in a private language school and she is also a lecturer in the Department of English Literature of DEI College, Greece. Her research interests examine the emotional and affective dimensions and representations of the body in Performing Arts.
