DLAN and CeKaTe co-produced Croatia’s first International Theatre Festival “Sign and Sound” dedicated to bilingual theatre and promotion of deaf performative arts (26 – 28 September 2018), during the International Week of the Deaf.
The programme included a round table discussion “The Role of Bilingual Theatre for Development of Inclusion and Deaf and Hearing Arts”, hosted by CeKaTe (Ivan Hromatko, PhD) and moderated by Mario Kovač, PhD. The discussion was joined by representatives from City of Zagreb’s Office for Culture, Ministry of Culture of Republic of Croatia, Association of the Deaf and Heard of Hearing of City of Zagreb, DLAN NGO, and actors from the Croatian version of “Guardians of Dreams”. In introduction to the discussion, Mario Kovač presented the results of CeKaTe’s (and ABbA’s) survey research on bilingual theatre that CeKaTe conducted after DLAN’s performances of “Guardians of Dreams”. This has opened up a fruitful discussion that showed how all institutions involved are eager to continue and develop bilingual theatre and festival of deaf arts.
After the round table, a two day festival programme started, organised by DLAN NGO.
During the festival, audience enjoyed in another bilingual performance by DLAN – “Guardians of Dreams” – and six other performances by deaf artists from China (Hong Kong), Belgium, Hungary and Serbia. After the festival, DLAN has organised a tour of Plitvice lakes for deaf artists.
We had around 200 visitors during the whole event – which we believe is a fair start to a deaf arts and bilingual theatre festival.
Photo album from the Festival is available here:
The whole Festival programme is available here (only in Croatian, so please use Google Translate): http://www.cekate.hr/program/fkzz-festival-kazalista-znak-i-zvuk/
The information about the festival was also posted on our ABbA web page (also only in Croatian): http://www.cekate.hr/program/projekti/kreativna-europa-abba-europe-teatar-znaka-i-zvuka/