All festivals try to be different. Innovative "formulas" are being experimented; the fees of the star artists and companies are being upped; new names are being promoted as "discoveries" and then turned into icons of the theatre fashion. In the end, though, with very few exceptions, all festivals look alike. At least, when judged by the festival audience and the festival schedule. Predominantly critics and theatre aficionados rush from one show into another (at the minimum of 2 per day, the maximum having no limit), from a conference to a workshop or a meeting with the cast. To be able to afford such a luxury the general public has to take a leave of absence. Which it does, when Avignon or Edinburgh loom on the horizon. Although this amounts to cultural tourism cases at large rather than to a festival theatre-going only.

We live in a time of huge contrasts and a deepening gap between them. The theatre, naturally, reflects the surrounding world. On the one hand, some artists and companies tend more and more to perform predominantly, or even only, at festivals. What's more: a part of them, together with the key core of the cultural-managers contingent, openly demonstrate their condescension and even contempt towards the "other" theatre - the regular, non-festival one. Their main argument? It's "commercial", they claim, or "conventional" or both. Which in most cases translates into: understandable and of importance to a lot of people - people still interested in "old-fashioned" things like story-telling and human emotions. Other artists and companies prefer to work "for everyone". Some of the first-class companies being among them. Like the British Royal National Theatre - a rare festival guest, unless it comes to the New York BAM, for instance. A week spent in that theatre, though, or, for that matter, a week on an intense "regular theatre"- going in London or Moscow, could easily be more rewarding and with a better "quality guarantee" than the same time at many festivals, where one is lucky if there's one extraordinary show on offer.

The ambition to build a bridge between these two "types" of theatre, or rather between the festival institution in principle and the general public, is the formula which makes

"Teatro a Corte" - the different festival.

In its second edition this year, it affords the biggest luxury today: to not be in a hurry. It lasts 5 weeks (from June 30 till August 3) but meanwhile takes some breaks, so "working" are de facto 22 days (being lumped in 6 periods of several consecutive days). Also: its shows are scheduled only in the evening! Of course, with the exception of the children's theatre. This unusual festival tempo translates into one thing mainly: "Teatro a Corte" is in the first place for the people of Turin and the Piemonte region. 4 of the "working" periods transpire outside of Turin, in 7 small towns within an hour distance from it. Which, in turn, means that the festival is also for the guests of Turin and the region - in the evenings, when they have already enjoyed the abundance of non-theatrical sights-to-see. Actually it's in some of these landmarks where the shows take place: all being Savoy ex-palaces or theirs courtyards. Wherefrom comes the title of the Festival. This combination of an aristocratic ambiance and a people's audience suits very much Turin - a city of kings and of working class.

To encourage Turin's citizens and its Italian guests to look at their rich cultural heritage from a new angle - moreover, to even help them get out of its sway - is the main goal of the Festival, according to its head Beppe Navello. "Our society is introvert, says he, and feels secure only when it's in touch with its roots." Very logically then the right approach of the Festival is not via provocation and shock (a specialty of many of its counterparts) but via offering something close to the tradition enriched with "the endless freedom and diversity of the contemporary theatre forms". In the country of comedia del'arte, the obvious choice is:

Street Theatre. Modern Version.

Actually, the above "contemporary diversity" formula (so favorite to cultural managers and arts funding bodies) is more applicable on paper (in manifests and especially in application forms for money) rather than in reality. Because, let's face it, our time hasn't added a considerable lot to the ingredients of the genre that have been known for ages: clownade and pantomime, acrobatics and juggling, pyrotechnics and fire games, stilts and all sorts of puppetry. The "new", as usually today, is connected with the technique: sound and visual effects, the so called "multimedia" - i.e. projections on screens, walls, cloths and people, etc. Of course, the turned-upside-down old also counts for new and sells very well as such. All this was available in abundance at the Festival. Quite naturally so, since invited were "the most famous" in the genre - a rubric where it's difficult to get in unless one doesn't play by the rules of today's art market - i.e. if one doesn't present oneself as an innovator according the above "criteria".

As a result, the three Spanish clowns (La Tal Con Leandre) and their show "Demodes" were all but funny. Not that they didn't manage to be so. Simply the goal, to all appearances, was for them to be exactly the opposite of the expected - something like anti-clowns. Without getting rid of the traditional tricks, make-up and all the attributes of clownade at that. So they looked more like bums a'la "Waiting for Godot", or rather like the widespread notion for them (quite different, in fact, from the initial requirements of Beckett for Estragon and Vladimir to be performed more like real clowns).

The pantomime too wasn't spared by the "contemporary tendencies", so the most beautiful silent theatre art form turned out to be captive of the nowadays ubiquitous decibels. The French mime Patrick Cottet-Moine, in his one-man show, relied mainly on sound effects. As a result, his immense plastic talent was literally intercepted by his music imitation skills and his ability to provoke the public to provide him with additional sound background.

Another mime-clown, the British Nola Rae, also alone on stage, was the only one who used the advantages of the technique and "the enlarged boundaries of theatre" not only to achieve superficial effects but to enrich the inner meaning of the show. Her bum-come-commander in "Exit Napoleon, pursued by rabbits", after having exhausted the "obligatory" arsenal of the genre (the fly, the wall, etc.) all of a sudden transformed into a theatrical version of the Chaplin's Dictator and the show entered into a really innovative territory. Behind a bed-turned-into-desk, by means of all possible war sounds (cannonade, sniper and gun shots, bombings, shells, etc.) and at the background of the respective smokes and lights, she "delivered" a speech of the eternal war-monger, above the "coat of arms" of the consumer world and its hungry shadow - a worn-out set of a knife and a fork crossed under a tin-plate fixed to the front of the desk.

This scene of Rae's "miniature" show was to me much more impressive and memorable than the much more peopled "Pi-Leau", promoted as a "grandiose show" by the "specialists of gigantic square shows" (the Dutch "Close-Act) and invited for the grand-opening of the Festival. It seemed to have everything necessary for the purpose: mermaids and sea dragons, the wheel of death and a giant shark, platforms and flying fires, which were taking by surprise the audience on the main square of Turin and people were quickly jumping aside to clear the path, thus adding to the effect of waves in a real sea. There were sound and visual effects in abundance. There was only one thing missing: a limit to all this which would prevent the technique from becoming the main hero of the evening. As a result, the show was like a 3D video game or an animated movie played alive, or even worse: like a part of a theme park, which made the overall effect of the evening very kitschy. Because no matter how much the theatre has "profited" from the development of the technique during the last century, the "special effects" have never been and are not its innate strength and every trespassing into this property of the screen arts brings the risk of turning the theatre's magic into a clumsy trickster's craft. Therefore, despite all obvious efforts invested in the making of the complex monsters in "Pi-Leau", the graceful ethereality of several jelly-fish, achieved via the oldest of the methods, was more appealing. While, on the other hand, the Ravell's Bolero and the splendid Fiddler of the Roof type of songs were overwhelmed by the techno-music. In brief: a disappointing beginning in which the obvious abundance of money was squandered for a not very theatrical purpose.

All of which didn't mean that the audience was unhappy. On the contrary. It awarded the artists with storm of applauses, as it actually did at all other shows. "Here's the result of the low-quality production spewed by the Berluskoni TVs for so many years already!" explained an Italian colleague.

An appropriate addition to the street theatre and, on the other hand, a perfect illustration of the relativism in the arts (i.e. of the everything goes principle) were the 50-metre food installations of the French Dorothee Selz in the most suitable place for the purpose - Pollenzo, a head-quarters of the University for gastronomic sciences.

On exactly the opposite pole and, at the same time, I dare say, also an example of the above principle were the two exceptions from the main festival tone - the shows "for connoisseurs" Antracte (of Josef Nadj) and Memoir de la Nuit (of the Swiss Philipp Boe). With the exception of the superb music and several extremely beautiful scenes in the first show (life drawings behind a mat screen), both shows were disappointing. Especially for such viewers like me, who had their first chance to see a Nadj show, moreover one in which he himself performed. The same Italian critic quoted above, a big fan of his!, tried to explain and justify the sad fact with a temporary artistic crisis: "Unfortunately, said she, here he's like a fly jostling against a window. But he sure will overcome this." To me, both shows, with their pretentiousness and incomprehensibility, were a proof that the elite art and the "bread and spectacle" type of entertainment are an equal distance away from the great art. In two different directions, of course.

The best

from the first part of the Festival (which this critic had the privilege to attend), surprisingly came not from the ranks of the highly touted "best European theatre professionals" (on the whole 34 companies from 10 countries), but was "supplied" by the students of the Italian Scuola Circo Vertigo. Their one-hour show "Nuovo Cinema Circo" was like a superb performance of an invisible giant juggler-illusionist who first showed us the two arts in his hands, to make sure that was no trickery there, and then started tossing them in the air so fast and in such a breath-taking way, that at one point it was not anymore clear where the cinema ends and where the circus begins, and there was a totally new, third entity there - very beautiful, unseen so far and overwhelming with its freshness and harmony. All this transpires on and has been done for a theatre scene, but it's not for that reason only that in the end looked more like a theatre than a piece of circus or film. In the splendid m�lange between them there was a unique type of poetic and association-based dramaturgy (Paulo Strata) and a first-class theatre-director's talent (Luisela Tamieto).

The show starts with quotes on cinema by famous film-makers projected on two screens at the back of the stage. Then the space in front of them turns out to be a film location where the young jugglers and acrobats are actors, technical staff and a director, while the fundamental circus attributes - like trapeze, a steel rope a meter and half above the proscenium parallel to the audience, etc. - are the sets. When the sign for the first double is given, film projections start and the circus begins imitating the cinema, then it illustrates some well-known themes; then enter the music and the two art forms start dancing. First this "dance" continues to be somewhat literal, i.e. illustrative. Then the 2D characters as if roll out of the screen onto the stage and begin juggling with umbrellas, staircases, chairs. Then the kiss theme is on (in the music and on the screen) and the two art forms melt into one. Here's only one scene as an example of the beauty of the new third entity: on the screens a motorcyclist travels as if on an endless road; on the proscenium several girls balance on the steel rope; a camera follows them and projects their silhouettes, reduced on a miniature scale, onto the images behind - like invisible guardian-angels of the man on the road. In the next scenes, exactly when the romantics is about to enter into the territory of sentimentality, the sense of humor interferes. And all this evolves so very naturally, as if by itself, that there's no doubt that the creators of this show have the potential in the future to create in Italy an institution of the Cirque du Solieil rank.

I couldn't see the other show with cirque elements - "Le Marin Lunaire" (The Moon Sailor) of the Russian Dmitri Korneevitch, which was later on in the program. However, a photo from it (turned into a poster of the Festival) most accurately illustrated the freshness and vitality both of Nuovo Cinema Circo and the intentions (albeit not always the results) of the whole endeavor entitled "Teatro a Corte": a sailor, with his back to us, sleeps on a rope hanging in the air and underneath his head there's a drawn crown (the emblem of the Festival) - maybe what he dreams at that moment...

*Dr. Kalina Stefanova is the author/editor of 11 books, three of which are in English and were launched in New York and London. Her articles have been published in 22 languages. She has been a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at New York University and Visiting Scholar at the University of Cape Town, and has delivered lectures and led seminars in 12 countries. For two mandates she served as Vice President of the International Association of Theatre Critics. Currently she is Associate Professor at the National Academy of Theatre and Film Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria and Director, Symposiums of the IATC. In 2007 she served as a dramaturge of the highly acclaimed production of Pentecost at the Stratford Festival of Canada. Her first fiction book Ann's Dwarves has brought her comparisons with The Little Prince and has been published in Macedonia and South Korea.