STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
Fringe theatre still means having a big amount of artistic independence – the main reason for a
lot of artists to explicitly work in this field.
Bulgaria
18 years after the so called ‘soft revolutions’ in former Soviet block, the Bulgarian theatre scene
still suffers from the ‘fear of freedom’ syndrome. After 1989, when the ideological control on
the arts field suddenly disappeared and the artists did not have to hide their political and
aesthetical preferences any more, the feeling of freedom quickly lost its excitement and most of
the artists, respectful part of Bulgarian society, were blocked and helpless. Unfortunately
Bulgarian theatre scene kept the socialist concept with new people which secured to the
employed artists minimal wages but almost killed any kind of constructive ideas.
It still blocks broader development of a fringe scene as well as the independent initiatives in the
field. Basically there is no market for fringe theatre productions – no accepting venues, no
touring agencies and no independent production houses - and there is basically almost no money
in Bulgaria to produce such projects. This is the big chance for street theatres from abroad!
The few municipality theatres in the country are run under exactly the same model as the state
theatres. The fringe/independent/street companies do not have a direct access to state funds for
maintenance and administrative costs. They can only apply for very limited money just for
particular projects.
The few Bulgarian independent groups in the last 15 years were used to get support mainly from
SOROS Center for the Arts – Sofia (which stopped the program in Bulgaria in 2001) and a little
bit from Swiss cultural program in Bulgaria (Pro Helvetia) which is still running an office in
Sofia. Even the fringe theatres are pushed to do very commercial low budget projects, or to cooperate
with partners from abroad and to do international co-productions. In general the fringe
companies in the field of drama and puppet theatre are very commercially orientated and they
do small low budget touring productions (companies like Perpetuum Mobile, Ariel, Tzvete etc).
A phenomenon is the drama theatre company La Strada, the only one of that kind which
managed to create so far high quality projects, with a cooperation of a few state theatres in
Sofia.
The most interesting artistic work comes from fringe companies in the field of physical theatre
and dance. There are a few companies which cooperate mainly with partners from abroad and
they tour outside the country (New Forms Theatre, Kontrapunkt, Den Gri X Foundation, Arepo
Group etc).
Bulgarian theatre and dance scene still needs a radical reform which can facilitate the street
theatres. They expect help from EU after entering of Bulgaria in the Union in 2007. At least this
is the dream of the independent artists.
Croatia
Croatian fringe theatre scene appeared mainly in the 1970s. Leadership of the organized
Croatian amateur theatres in cooperation with prominent theatre critics stimulates and
encourages unique and original artistic theatre companies as opposed to imitative dilettante
theatre groups (BRAMS, the leading alternative theatre festival in former Yugoslavia in the
eighties. Those theatres make a core off today's Croatian alternative theatre (Lero, Dubrovnik;
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PE 375.307