The theater returned to the city of Prilep with the 57th edition of the Macedonian Theater Festival "Vojdan Chernodrinski", which takes place from June 9 to 16 with the motto "Homecoming".

- From the first moment when the Assembly of the festival chose me as artistic director and president of the assembly, I started to create my own vision of how I want this festival to look like. I grew with the festival, from the festival I learned and fell in love with the theater, for the festival I built myself in my professional field. For me, Prilep will always be the first image of the festival and the festival will be the first image of Prilep. That's why I won't use words much, I hope these emotions of gratitude will reach each and every one of you who helped make my vision come true. All the challenges, disagreements, the stubbornness of Prilep, the emotional poetic cry in me, the serious theater expert, the patience of the professor, melt into the gratitude and joy that we are here today - said Ana Stojanoska, artistic director of the festival "Vojdan Chernodrinski" in Prilep on the plateau in front of the Center for culture "Marko Cepenkov" at the official opening on June 9.

Theatregoers, a large Prilep audience, admirers of theater art came together to mark the beginning of the 57th edition of the festival. On the official part, the live statues of "Teatrosk" and the performance of the skomrach performed by the students of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts from Skopje were a great foreshadowing.

A rich program located in several content units will be offered by MTF "Vojdan Chernodrinski" this year. The program of the festival will start every day at 10 am with "Chernodrinsky for children". Round table discussions will be organized at noon, where the performances that will be on the program from the previous day will be discussed.

There will be book promotions, an international conference, and an exhibition of costumes and photos from performances on which costume designer Blagoj Micevski worked for the past almost 20 years will be set up. Actors Petar Temelkovski and Petar Mircevski won the lifetime achievement awards this year.

The ceremonial opening of the festival was preceded by the opening of a rare national exhibition of photographs from important old editions, as well as works by Kole Chashule, the author in focus of the festival. The director of the "Borka Taleski" library, Monika Taleska, spoke about the importance of this permanent display, and Ana Stojanoska emphasized how important it is to pay respect to great native authors, such as Čašule.

The first performance of the official program was "No electricity for the electric chair" directed by Dejan Projkovski and produced by the Theater "Jordan Hadji Konstantinov - The Giant" from Veles.

10 plays will participate in the official program of the festival, five plays will participate in the program "Independent production starring domestic authors", and the students from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts from Skopje will also perform graduation plays.

This year, the Assembly of the festival, following the proposal of the president Ana Stojanoska, decided that the committee that will decide on the awards should be entirely from abroad. Members of the jury will be Miki Radojnić, theater expert, current director of "Steriino pozorje" in Novi Sad, Miloš Latinović, director of the theater and festival "Bitef" in Belgrade and Janko Ljumović, theater producer, professor, former Minister of Culture of Montenegro .

Every day from 17:XNUMX at several locations around the city, festival zones will be set up in which members of the "Teatrosk" group will set up their living statues, while students from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts from Skopje will be skomrach and present short traveling etudes. This program is supported by Pacomak.

On June 13, an international conference will be held on the topic "Macedonian theater through the eyes of the Macedonian public". The festival will be closed on June 16 with the award ceremony. In their honor, the Serbian National Theater from Novi Sad will host the play "The Last Balkan Vampire" written by Dejan Dukovski and directed by Aleksandar Popovski. The patrons of the 57th MTF "Vojdan Chernodrinski" are the Ministry of Culture and the Municipality of Prilep. MRT is the media sponsor.

(The text was published in "Cultural Press" number 182, in the printed edition of the newspaper "Sloboden Pechat" on 10-11.6.2023)