October is the month in which Yerevan's theatres and squares become a stage for performing arts from all over the world. I attended the Felix Meritis Foundation's program called "Connecting the Caucasus". High Fest is the name of this unique event. The name of the Armenian Republic in the Armenian language is Hayastan. So, phonetically, High Fest is at the same time the festival of this country and a moment to be lived on a higher ground. I witnessed it and I will try and report it as it truly deserves.

I. First of all Yerevan

First of all Yerevan: the town has been conceived with an ambitious blueprint and built during the soviet period according to a solar model. From the city's core start irradiations of streets that cross the huge boulevards that draw circles in the round. The vast perspectives leave the view travel and the sense of movement is spread by the enchainment of turns, up and downs, tunnels and big crossroads as well - obviously - as the never ending spreading of cars, trucks, impure means of transport.
A visionary capitol town which substituted from a small medieval one built beside a monastery and among churches and mosques, simply erasing everything. Only a small church lies in the courtyard of a palace remains of the old monastery and the wrecks of the Erebuni fortress, which dates from the Urartean period (782 BC).
And yet, Yerevan is deeply Armenian. It's full of Armenian motives. It talks about the Armenian history and spirit at each corner. It has been conceived to be vast, solemn and spectacular. There are many squares, over the hilltops around you can see allegoric statues looking over the population, gardens and fountains are everywhere. Last but not least: the Mount Ararat can be seen from almost each point of the town.
Actually the city looks like a mix of dynamic glass palaces of recent international conception and classic static heavy soviet buildings. Monuments and big trees, beside public spaces and huge fountains, remind us of the ever lasting Armenian icons and the power of the past Soviet Union that became multinational corporations. Yerevan now spreads an enormous power, because of the fighting that is going on among its souls: the builder, the destroyer, the preserver.
So, it is not silly to say that Yerevan is a perfect theatre.

II. The High Festival exists since 2003

The High Festival exists since 2003. It is an expanding reality. From the beginning, we can see that there is an increasing number of companies invited and an increasing number of countries represented. This year the focus was mainly on Europe with an outstanding participation from Italy (six theatre groups) and from the Baltic Regions: Austria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Macedonia, also The Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Spain and the United Kingdom. Also shows representing nations outside Europe were coming from Argentina, Israel, Georgia and the USA.
Looking at the history of the festival, this one usually seemed a much more west-oriented edition. In the past the program also featured shows from South Korea, India, Kazakhstan, Singapore, Ukraine and Israel in the tradition that wants Armenia to be a bridge between the East and the West.
Anyway, the festival has the soul of a crossroad and it is a natural place to discuss, discover and invent.
High Festival is somehow pioneering and at the same time making a work on theatre students and professionals, deepening the connections and the conscience of global movements and trends. It is a huge work that needs strength and passion (and good luck, I may say). The staff is young and motivated.
The festival spots are all the theatres in town, plus some open spaces very suitable for shows. This year's edition registered a good participation of public and it looked like shows often satisfied their audiences.
It is a performing arts festival. It means that drama, dance, plastic theatre, puppetry, children performances were featured and that - among those categories - a big variety was also present with traditional, academic and experimental shapes in the picture. An open-minded collection of works with certainly a good average quality.
Yes, indeed there were technical problems and also the logistic side needs to be improved. Surely the ambitions of this structure have to pass through those tasks, anyway this edition succeeded in being a soulful meeting point.

III - Festival's highlights

National Centre of Aesthetics - Little Theatre (Armenia)
"The diary of a madman", directed by Vahan Badalyan
A puzzling stage version of Gogol's writings. 5x5 meters of space masterfully enlightened by this young, serious, amazing theatre group. Arsen Khatchatryan in the main role shows a complete range of abilities in a performance which is dry essential and very rhythmic. Around him, some screenings are employed to create an ever changing flux of volumes of space into which Aksenty Poprischin (Gogol's alter ego) relates with his own ghosts. The composition is sustained by a strong logic and the accuracy that spreads along the whole piece building up a sense of hypnosis which somehow brings to joy.

Nico Baixas (Spain)
"La Guinda"
The theatre made with objects and with fingers on one side. On the other side there is a great face and a physique that will never be unnoticed. The whole performance swings between these two dimensions: just when we start to believe in the fiction developing in the microscopic theatre, our attention is drawn by some sardonic smile or ambiguous glance and suddenly we focus on that man, a disturbing figure that El Greco would have painted and at the same time an image of genuine childhood.
Nico Baixas plays with everything near at hand just to subvert stereotypes and take us to a trip inside our common fears, ideas of desire and love, destructive impulses and candour.

Youth Experimental State Theatre (Armenia)
"Unfinished self-portrait", directed by Aida Hovhannisyan
Pirandello's novel "The licence" is being re-invented and adapted for the stage. A 13-year old show spreading energy and passion. A show that has been continuously changing its cast serving as a gymnasium for young actors. It is about the pure pleasure of playing. Aida Hovhannisyan leads her troupe with rhythm and humour and the actors show a full range of skills in the art of the comedy.

Fabbrica del Vento (Italy)
"Sgorbypark", written and directed by Giacomo Gamba
Imagine two cold war spies lobotomized and thrown in a cell with nothing to eat but insects and with not so much to breathe. They fall in a senseless short circuit which brings to light all their past struggles by fragments and the masks that they wore while they were working on both sides of the iron curtain. A war is over, a world is over, their lives have no sense but still they are alive and they gasp for life. It is at the same time very funny and deeply sad. The rhythm switches from total frenzy to subtly sublime moments of stillness. The acting is physical and logical, sustained by a total accuracy. An open-hearted, open- minded and an open-eyed work.

Yekaterineburg Municipal Puppet Theatre (Russia)
"Picture of an exhibition"
Based on Mussorgsky's music, this show can be described as a clockwork system. It is about mechanical perfection. Three puppeteers give life to a series of characters contained in various boxes that lie in disorder on the stage, just like if they were forgotten. Each box is a room of a castle, and each room has a story. From story to story, we discover the love life of a court and we discover that all the rooms can be boxed-in to compose the whole castle. When the castle has been built up, the puppeteers have done their job and some magic make them fall asleep. And the castle starts living its own life without the help of human hands. Something astounding in accuracy and virtuoso.

Mihr Plastic Dance Theatre (Armenia)
"Am I crazy?", directed by Tsolak Mlke Galstyan
A very young group performs an allegory of the condition of the artist into the society through a dynamic series of living pictures into which immobility and frenzy movement alternate. The stage design and the costumes are based on simple geometrical forms coloured in red and white. It looks strictly related to some avant-garde forms of the first half of the 20th century, but we cannot say that there is a will to search connections through history. It is more about the need of absolute feelings and the expression of the art's devastating force on the soul. A spiritual view on the work of the artist as a sacrifice. It surely is something too big to handle, but still it is interesting to see that belief in action, a genuine and inexhaustible one.

IV - Conclusions

This festival was good. There would be many other things worth reporting at a later date.