Program – Vabaduse festival https://vabadusefestival.ee Mon, 01 Sep 2025 13:57:39 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://vabadusefestival.ee/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/cropped-Favicon-32x32.jpg Program – Vabaduse festival https://vabadusefestival.ee 32 32 here@ performative concert https://vabadusefestival.ee/en/program/here-performative-concert/ Mon, 11 Aug 2025 10:54:47 +0000 https://vabadusefestival.ee/?post_type=program&p=1138

Here@ is an electro-acoustic live session led by musician and composer Ali Hout, in collaboration with Sulayman Al Bassam and Eric Soyer. The project delves into the cultural and sonic resonances of Gulf maritime memory through a hybrid performance blending live music, archival sound, and electronic composition.

The title refers to the “Hirat” (الهيرات) — sea zones historically known for their rich natural pearl beds in the Arabian Gulf. These areas represent a forgotten heritage and a vanished way of life, deeply tied to the region’s economic and cultural history before the oil era.

This performance marks the first public presentation of the project, premiered at the VABADUSE FESTIVAL – International Freedom Theatre Festival in Narva.

Photos from the festival Jelizaveta Gross

]]> DJ CUMBIOPE https://vabadusefestival.ee/en/program/dj-cumbiope/ Fri, 18 Jul 2025 15:07:15 +0000 https://vabadusefestival.ee/?post_type=program&p=1074 Originally from Lima-Peru, CumbioPe is a full immersive journey to the tropical sounds from the south. You will shake your bones if you give in to the grooves. From Salsa to cumbia and spark of different sunny genres. Get your dancing shoes ready!


Photos from the festival Ilja Smirnov

]]> DJ Työmik Bassofsky https://vabadusefestival.ee/en/program/dj-tyomik-bassofsky/ Fri, 18 Jul 2025 15:00:07 +0000 https://vabadusefestival.ee/?post_type=program&p=1069 Työmik Bassofsky is a turntable DJ from Narva. Once known only locally, he has now performed at over 100 events across Estonia. He is a finalist of the Heineken DJ Battle in Estonia and has frequently appeared at the Station Narva festival. His performances have been featured at festivals and events such as Tallinn Music Week, Labyrinth, TalTech Mott and Triloogia, as well as in clubs like Studio and D3. His versatile sets—marked by a unique and recognizable style—blend old-school and new-school hip-hop, funk, baile, house, UK garage, and drum’n’bass.

Photos from the festival Jelizaveta Gross

]]> Mavka https://vabadusefestival.ee/en/program/mavka/ Mon, 07 Jul 2025 13:18:50 +0000 https://vabadusefestival.ee/?post_type=program&p=1044 One of the most dramatic and complicated questions of this war is what is life like in the occipied territories? Three characteras, three women – or is she all alone after all?

The courageous play by the Ukrainian dramatist Iryna Serebriakova is read in Russian by actresses of Südalinna Theater Tatyana Yegorushkina, Anna Markova and Anna Sergeyeva.

Duration 1h.


Photos from the festival Jelizaveta Gross

]]> THE DIARY OF A MADMAN (Estonia) https://vabadusefestival.ee/en/program/the-diary-of-a-madman-estonia/ Mon, 16 Jun 2025 14:10:44 +0000 https://vabadusefestival.ee/?post_type=program&p=1004 N.Gogol’s “Diary of a Madman” is not just a story of an existential crisis and a complete split in the consciousness, but its great value lies in the fact that it describes the genetic code of the Russian man with great accuracy. The main character’s escape into fantasy and gradual madness is a desperate attempt to find himself in a world that ignores and degrades him. And the stronger the press of this meaningless existence, of hallucinatory life and of bragging about the extraordinary, the stronger the will of a man to turn the world into an antiworld and an anti-reality in which he lives. All this ‘madness’ is unfolding right before our very eyes.

📸 Anastassia Volkova


Photos from the festival Ilja Smirnov

]]> The Notebook (Estonia) https://vabadusefestival.ee/en/program/the-notebook-estonia/ Thu, 15 May 2025 07:04:46 +0000 https://vabadusefestival.ee/?post_type=program&p=901 Young twin brothers are sent away from war to live with their grandma on the border of two countries. The boys promise each other that they do everything in their power to stay alive in this crazy world. They create their own workout system and rules, and tenaciously start shaping themselves into people who can cope with the cruel and unforgiving surroundings. Meanwhile, they record everything in their notebook. This is an honest and poetic story of survival and adaptation in our mad world.

The production is based on the first novel from Agota Kristof’s trilogy The Notebook. The Proof. The Third Lie, which was published in Estonian in 1997. Agota Kristof (1935–2011) was a Hungarian writer who left her native country after the uprising of 1956 against the communist regime. She moved to Switzerland and wrote mainly in French. Written in an unembellished and suggestive style, several of her novels have also been published in Estonian, but this is the first time her work reaches the Estonian theatre stage. 

Veiko Porkanen and Ken Rüütel received a special achievement award at the 2025 Estonian Theater Awards for their masterful acting harmony in the production of “The Notebook”.

Heli- ja videomeister Juho Porila

📸 Maris Savik


Photos from the festival Ilja Smirnov

]]> Morning Discussion https://vabadusefestival.ee/en/program/morning-discussion/ Mon, 21 Apr 2025 13:30:09 +0000 https://vabadusefestival.ee/?post_type=program&p=825 Thematic morning conversations will take place to help better understand the environment and culture from which the festival artists originate. The conversations will be moderated by Rein Lang or Toomas Kiho. Artists and experts from the focus regions, as well as diplomats and opinion leaders, will participate in the discussions.

Topics and dates:

16.08 – ‘Ukraine’. Speakers Volodõmõr Petriv (head of Rivne Theatre), Vita Šinkarenko (founder of Rivne Veterans House), moderator Rein Lang.

17.08 – ‘Arab world’. Speakers Peeter Raudsik, Hala Omran, Sulayman Al Bassam, moderator Rein Lang.

18.08 – ‘Caucasus’. Speakers Kamran Shahmardan, Artur Ghukasyan, Saba Aslamazishvili, moderator Toomas Kiho.

19.08 – ‘Freedom in Narva’. Speakers Madli Pesti, Lavly Perling, Kristina Kallas, moderator Toomas Kiho.

The conversations will be held in Russian or English, with simultaneous interpretation.

📸 Ilja Smirnov (Vabaduse festival 2021/23)

Photos from the festival: Jelizaveta Gross

]]> Internal Climate (Estonia) https://vabadusefestival.ee/en/program/internal-climate-story-of-baltijets/ Mon, 10 Mar 2025 09:09:19 +0000 https://vabadusefestival.ee/?post_type=program&p=743 “Internal Climate” is a documentary about Narva’s most mysterious building, once known only as Postbox nr 2. This was the address of a covert military factory called Baltijets that was so secret that it could not be found on any maps. Even more confidential was what was done there. Some thought it was used for uranium enrichment, others for the production of space technology. Regardless of what was actually going on in there, the factory was rumoured to be an amazing employer. Workers were treated so well that paradise on earth was just around the corner. To this day, some people still don’t want to talk about all that, because who knows…?

Who were the people who drove all the way from Russia to Narva? How much did they even know about where they were going? What keeps them in Narva today? The play explores how a secret military factory had an impact on the city’s development and what mark the closed environment left on the people and the city. The production is based on interviews with former Baltijets workers, historians and young people from Narva.

More information about the play can be found HERE.

The production is being funded via the Just Transition Fund project ‘An Environmentally Friendly and Socially Cohesive Ida-Viru County’.

📸 Kalev Lilleorg

Photos from the festival Jelizaveta Gross

]]> In Memory (Kazakhstan) https://vabadusefestival.ee/en/program/in-memory-kazakhstan/ Thu, 27 Feb 2025 07:46:07 +0000 https://vabadusefestival.ee/?post_type=program&p=687 “A few months ago I asked myself “how did I end up in Almaty?” I was born here, my parents were too, and my grandparents came here from different parts of the USSR in search of a better life. And they found it here. I began to research the motives for their move, their impressions. At the same time, I researched how the city was changing around them. The result was a performance in which I tell the story of my ancestors and the city in different ways. In terms of genre, it is close to a performative lecture, but I call it a performance. One big story, which I collected piece by piece, has everything you need for a dramatic play. An important part of the performance is the process of my research itself. I will tell you how I restored the lost names of relatives and looked for the disappeared villages where they were born on the map. How I collected archival photographs of my native Almaty and small Soviet towns that I had never been to. Our city and streets changed names, people came and went, buildings were built and torn down, but is there something left of what my great-grandfather fell in love with in 1950? This is what my play is about.”

– Mark Kuklin

Photos from the festival Jelizaveta Gross

]]> Mute (Kuwait-Lebanon-Syria) https://vabadusefestival.ee/en/program/mute-kuweit/ Tue, 25 Feb 2025 21:54:55 +0000 https://vabadusefestival.ee/?post_type=program&p=680

The seismic event of the Beirut port explosion in August 2020 forms the backdrop to MUTE, a poetic-political text in which Al Bassam tests possible forms of resistance in the face of escalating violence and unprecedented media disinformation. 

MUTE is also a personal metaphor for the thinker and artist who chooses absolute silence, the total negation of speech, as his sovereign form of expression. Faced with the dissolution of the political concepts of left and right, and the geopolitical changes taking place in the Arab world, Al-Bassam poses the following question: how do we define artistic resistance today? What would happen were we to abandon traditional forms of narrative critique and posit silence as a tool of resistance?

SABAB Theatre is an independent touring theatre company led by writer/director Sulayman Al-Bassam. The company has achieved worldwide acclaim for its productions, regularly performing to audiences across five continents.

AWARDS FOR MUTE                       

Awards at its World Premiere, Les Journées Théâtrales de Cartage, 2023

“Golden Tanit Award (Best Production)”

“Best Actress Award” to Hala Omran

“Best Text Award” to Sulayman Al Bassam

Awards at Cairo International Experimental Theatre Festival, 2024

“Best Actress Award” to Hala Omran

“Best Text Award” to Sulayman Al Bassam

Produced by SABAB Theatre Company
www.sabab.org
Follow SABAB on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/sabab.theatre

Learn more: Behind the Story of  “Mute”. Author and director Sulayman Al Bassam opens up.

1. Why did you choose this topic? How has this production influenced your work and life?

“Mute” is a theatrical performance that interrogates the notion of artistic resistance. The work is set against the backdrop of a massive human tragedy –  the explosion of the port of Beirut in August 2020. The monologue that constitutes the text is a long, discursive enquiry into the meaning of being an artist –  a theatre artist – in the face of huge violence. The form and structure of the performance seek to challenge traditional theatre norms and explore the limits of traditional dramaturgy. This production has deeply influenced my work by pushing me to question how we define theatrical art and find more radical ways to interact with the audience, breaking expectations and pushing the limits of artistic expression. The performance also brings together artists from Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria, and France, creating a unique fusion of diverse cultural backgrounds.

2. Were there any interesting situations during rehearsals or performances? Please describe. 

One particularly interesting situation was our own doubt during the preparation of the performance, regarding the very genre of what we were creating. Was this really theatre? At every stage of the creation, we questioned the form and nature of the performance, which pushed us to explore beyond the conventional boundaries of theatre. We were faced with the uncertainty of how the audience would respond to this unconventional experience, where traditional narrative is broken and text, music/light take center stage and where provocation is an integral part of the interaction. This constant questioning enriched our creative process and reinforced the idea of “Mute” as a form of artistic resistance that challenges the usual expectations of theatre.

3. Is there something else that the audience should know?

“Mute” is the latest result of a long-standing collaboration between artistic, musical and acting teams. For lead actress Hala Omran, scenographer Eric Soyer, and writer/director Sulayman Al Bassam, this partnership spans over ten years and more than six productions. What unites all these works is their engagement with the contemporary realities of violence. With “Mute”, this exploration reaches a new level of artistic abstraction, creating a space for reflection and contemplation. The production also adopts a carnivalesque tone –  becoming, in a way, an irreverent elegy to traditional forms of political critique. It challenges conventional approaches while offering a bold, thought-provoking experience.

4. What is freedom to you?

For me, freedom is the ability to experiment, to break with established conventions and, above all, to be free of the duty of delivering a coherent, tidy message. I believe audiences who have appreciated “Mute” also recognise this freedom and find it exhilirating!

Photos from the festival Jelizaveta Gross

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