TNS, organizer of Festival Premières (photo: Tamas Kiraly)

Last year, after we’d performed Hamletmachine at the ITS Festival in Amsterdam, we thought: That’s it. The show’s been going for a year and a half since its first performance at BAC, this is a worthy end.

But no!  A year later, the machine is back again (no killing the machine!) and it looks like it might keep going for some time still. On 5th and 6th of June we performed at the lovely Festival Premières in Strasbourg, France. The festival was organised by Le-Maillon Theatre de Strasbourg and Theatre National Strasbourg, and the beautiful Theatre Jeune Publique hosted our show. With incredibly helpful theatre and festival staff, it was a joy to revive the show.

Theatre Jeune Publique, our riverside venue!

The festival hosted 10 shows by young directors from all over Europe. A show which made a particularly strong impression on us was Sanja Mitrovic’s Will You Ever Be Happy Again, a “docu-tale” comparing the experiences of a young Serbian, with German experiences of WW2. This was done with humour, insight and lots of energy. If you get a chance to see it, do! (It’s currently touring Europe…)

We performed Hamletmachine three times to sold out houses, participated in a platform discussion event with the other directors and were interviewed for the German/Frech TV channel ARTE. We look forward to performing in France again in the near future…

The auditorium of the TJP with some of the helpful staff

For more info on Festival s Premières see:

http://www.le-maillon.com/

- Oystein