On Monday 14 November, the 18th Amman International Theatre Festival was inaugurated in Jordan. The festival has been held annually since 1994, as an initiative of the Jordanian ministry of culture in cooperation with Amman’s Al-Fawanees, the Jordanian Artist’s Union. The festival aims to create a dynamic interaction between the Jordanian, Arab and international theatre scenes.

This year’s eighteenth edition of the festival was inaugurated on 14 November by Salah Jarrar, Jordanian Minister of Culture. “The ministry sees this festival as an important window for democratic artistic expressions,” Jarrar said in his opening speech.

The guest of honour is the renowned Jordanian actor Mohamed Al-Abbadi.

Egyptian director and professor of theatrical arts, Hanaa Abdel Fattah, gave a short speech in the name of Arab artists. “Today we cannot disconnect cultural activities from the Arab Spring,” Abdel Fattah commented. “As such, theatrical performances should, even if not in a direct way, be linked to or reflect, in its contents or form, the socio-political changes.”

This year, the festival hosts 15 theatre troupes from Arab countries that include Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Algeria, Sudan and Egypt; as well as troupes from Poland and Italy. Plays will be performed in a number of venues in Amman, including Al-Hussein Cultural Centre and the Royal Cultural Centre.

Egypt theatre group Wuguh (Faces) will perform a play entitled Cafeteria, directed by Mohamed Fouad on two consecutive days, 15 and 16 November.

Apart from the theatre performances, the festival also includes a series of seminars themed “Theatre of the Future – Changes and Perception” with the presence of renowned theatre specialists from the Arab world, including Hanaa Abdel Fattah, Abu Al-Hassan Salam and Hamdi Al-Gabri from Egypt.