Timisoara was at the centre of the Romanian revolution in December 1989 – and the rush by news media to discover and publish sensational information led to the widespread publication of false information about a so-called “mass graves affair”.

Journalist Colette Braeckman travelled to Timisoara on 23 December 1989 and published a few weeks later an article titled ‘Je n’ai rien vu à Timisoara’ (I Have Seen Nothing in Timisoara) in the Belgium newspaper Le Soir.

Based on her experience and years of journalistic work, Colette Braeckman will discuss the “mass graves affair” and the ensuing media disinformation as a vital warning about rushing to the truth – and, in contrast, the benefits of slow and critical reflection that theatre can offer audiences.

This keynote connects to the themes of disinformation and theatre as an open, democratic space, discussed during the European Theatre Forum 2023, an event organised by the European Commission last spring.

This particular session puts ETC Members in the spotlight, giving them the opportunity to share the learnings from different formats of International Artistic Collaboration they’ve participated in at ETC over the past two years, including two seasons of ETC Development Grants, the award-winning Young Europe IV project and the large-scale EU cooperation project ACuTe.

At a time when concept-touring became a new buzzword in our sector around the world, we realised that ETC has always searched for forms of collaboration that go beyond co-producing and touring. How to collaborate when working in different theatre systems and scales, driven by the desire to bridge between these different actors and organisations in Europe?

This session shines the light on those collaboration models that each have their own format, created out of the aesthetic and artistic question(s) at the starting point of each interaction, and that can serve as inspiration to new joint work, crossing borders and crossing languages.

With:

• ETC Development Grant: Innovative Ways of Inclusive Talent Development with Nina von Tongeren (De Toneelmakerij)
• ETC Development Grant: Kick-Off Fast Forward Festival Forum with Charlotte Orti (Staatsschauspiel Dresden), Isabel Andreen (Théâtre National de Bretagne), Yannis Moschos (National Theatre of Greece)
• ETC Development Grant: The Best European Show with Marko Bratuš (Slovenian National Theatre Nova Gorica)
• ETC Development Grant: Drama of Smaller European Languages with Jure Novak (Preseren Theatre Kranj), Raquel Castells (Teatro Arriaga), Miriam Kičinova (Slovak National Drama Theatre)
• Young Europe IV with Paulien Geerlings (De Toneelmakerij), Marina Maleni (Cyprus Theatre Organisation, Mona vom Dahl (Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe)
• ACuTe with Carla Meller (Theatre Dortmund / Academy for Theatre & Digitality), George Costea (Teatrul Național Marin Sorescu Craiova)

The session presents and promotes the two complementary sustainability tools to be explored and tested by ETC Member Theatres, calling theatre to action and thus following ETC’s Sustainable Action Code in a targeted way:

• The 'STAGES Doughnut Workshop': A Holistic Sustainability Tool for Theatres Worldwide
• The ‘ETC Theatre Green Book’: A benchmarking, labelling and certification system as a European standard

With:

• Emmanuelle Lejeune, Théâtre de Liège
• Raquel Castells, Teatro Arriaga
• Joachim Klement, Staatsschauspiel Dresden