Open Space: new season brings contemporary theatre shows to Tbilisi venue

New productions of contemporary stage art will herald the spring season of Open Space, a recently founded experimental art platform, as directors bring shows reflecting social and political issues to audiences in Tbilisi starting this week.

On the outskirts of the capital city, organisers of the 2018-launched Open Space of Experimental Art, an “alternative space” for creatives, will lend their stage to stagings on violence, gender stereotyping and oppression.

The spring programme will open on Wednesday with Passport, a “documentary show” based on personal interviews with residents from near Georgia’s occupied regions, subjected to daily threat of violence, kidnapping and torture.

With six actors cast by director Mikheil Charkviani, the production takes a critical look at the idea of state being able to protect its citizens — manifested in the ubiquitous line found in citizen passports around the world — in the realm of conflict and uncertainty.

‘Sorrow’ by Davit Khorbaladze was presented in the Georgian Showcase of the Tbilisi International Festival of Theatre:

Passport will run in a bill of two shows during the season, with the 70-minute work set to run on April 10 and 14.

It first run will be followed by Sorrow, an exploration of suffering “from traditional and religious pressure, moral conscience, unrealised desires and dreams and a lack of love”.

Direction by Davit Khorbaladze brings the subject to the stage via the character of a medical examiner in a morgue, struggling with dreariness of their uninspired life while yearning for a more meaningful existence.

Mikheil Abramishvili, Gvantsa Enukidze and Temo Rekhviashvili are cast as the three characters of the staging that reflects the Open Space focus on relevance of actual social problems to stage art.

In the third show for the spring bill, Charkviani and Khorbaladze join forces to bring forth personal stories of a larger cast of performers, ranging from the oppression of patriarchal social structures on an individual to effects of parenthood.

A summary for Parents Meeting said the production “relies on personal life of actors who take part in the play”, also drawing from “interviews of ordinary people” and from Tragedy Without Hero, a 1922 novel by Georgian author Niko Lortkipanidze.

The platform presented ‘Parents Meeting’ at the Fadjr International Theatre Festival in Tehran earlier this year. Photo: Open Space on Facebook.

The performance venue for Open Space of Experimental Art was launched last year in a bid to “create a free environment for enhancing creative styles and methods for expression”.

Its theatre laboratory aims to explore “new ways, methods and forms and it is opening the way for artists who are interested to create a non-classical theatre process in an alternative environment”, organisers said.

The founding of the platform marks a move towards experimental stage art reflecting societal debates, controversy and topics in society — a novel initiative on the backdrop of largely classical theatre productions held by state-run venues in Georgia.

The location for Open Space performances, a renovated building on the outskirts of Tbilisi, was also deliberately chosen with the aim of expanding stage art beyond its traditional hubs in the capital’s downtown.

The decision was seen as a possibility to provide opportunity for suburban residents to connect to performing art, which has usually been tied to major theatres in central avenues of Tbilisi.

The spring season for Open Space will be on for theatre-goers between April 10-21.