Press release

27 February – March 1 2012 at Liège

And look at this, the International University Theatre Reunion (RITU) is back with its 29^th edition, which will once again offer the public the opportunity to, for a few days, ‘go round the world on their armchair’ (or from the theatre), as the time-honoured expression has it.

It’s impossible not to be surprised each year: the RITU is here once again, without an interruption since 1983! An exceptional case for a university theatre festival which involves both academic research and theatre in practice, be it spontaneous, amateur or pre-professional, to use the typology established by the International University Theatre Association (IUTA). Once again the whole of the Royal Liège University Theatre (TURLg) will stand up to be counted to make these days an exceptional moment of exchanges and encounters between the public and the participating troops: students, actors, professors, directors, etc. In short, all the active forces which combine to make theatre at the university.

This year the edition will be ‘light’, budgetary restrictions making their impact. It will extend over four days, but the programme will remain dense and well stocked: with 10 performances of 7 foreign shows and a vintage show – a reprise of its Trial, based on Kafka, created in 2011 – and with its workshops devoted to training actors, with its multiple rendez-vous and round tables on university theatre, the RITU indeed remains a varied window for thinking about and putting on theatre shows within a university environment.

 
True to its traditions the RITU as ever crosses borders and language barriers: all the performances being in original version, live, and without subtitles. It is a rule appreciated by the public, in particular the teachers who profit from this annual meeting to bring their pupils to discover in a different manner what they teach in the classroom. And it is also completely naturally that the programme of this 29^th edition is inscribed in the project currently being led at the University of Liège, which together with its Higher Institute of Modern Languages (ISLV) has made 2012 a ‘Year of Languages’ to promote the numerous opportunities to learn and practice foreign languages, including the ones which can be found within its walls.

Judge for yourselves: the RITU 29 programme meets these criteria very well. A montage based on Shakespeare’s monologues will be presented in English by the Willpower troop from the Colchester Sixth Form College (United Kingdom). The Campus Theater de Constance (Germany) will offer an updated version of Goethe’s Faust 1 and 2, in German, as it should be. The Teatro Abrego de Cantabrie (Spain) will have us see a show inspired by Garcia Lorca’s Noces de Sang, in Castilian. Finally, Dutch will also be on the programme with the Utrecht School of the Arts and its own original play on the theme of global warming. On the other hand the French of the ‘Cie les Anachroniques’ of the University of Toulouse 2 Le Mirail, will for their part act out a contemporary play, Titereandito by Marcelo Lobera, in Castilian, whilst the Poles of the Théâtre de l’Entracte, RITU regulars, will present in French  Le Livropathe, by our Belgian author, Thierry Debroux.

Finally, to open the festival the TURLg has for the third time invited the students of the Tartu Student Theatre within the context of a bilateral Belgian-Estonian joint project: they will present to us a En pleine mer by Slawomir Mrojek, whilst the TURLg will offer its version at Tartu in 2013.

Must we still speak of borders and language barriers?

See the press dossier

See the RITU29 pages on the TURLg site