SEAS Coastal Varna Balchik & Mangalia

The Fantomats in Mangalia.

The SEAS Coastal programme was created to span the new EU border between Romania and Bulgaria. Events were presented in both countries, with a single brochure in both languages, and coaches were organised to move audiences from Romania to Bulgaria and vice versa.

The places

Varna is a busy tourist sea resort with a small port and huge cathedral. The smaller Balchik was once part of Romania and it is the site of the former Romanian Queen’s palace. The Bulgarian side of the Coastal Event was split between these two venues. The local contemporary cultural life was active but not well resourced. Over the border is Mangalia, by contrast to the sedate Balchik, a noisy holiday resort full of young people on holiday.

The original plan was to take a ferry from Odessa to Varna but it was discovered that since the break-up of the Soviet Block the ferry links between neighbouring ex-socialist states had been severely cut back. So in the absence of a ferry, a private plane was chartered in Odessa. The lack of ferry services on the Black Sea is symptomatic. There is a general lack of interaction between countries on the Black Sea. We found on our research trips that Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Romanian artists and arts organisations tended to have better relationships with partners in Western European countries than they had with each other. It was decided on that one of the objectives in SEAS’ Black Sea tour would be to open up or revive lines of cultural exchange between the adjacent countries on the Black Sea coast.

Main partners and setting

With the International Theatre Festival Varna Summer as the host in Varna and the SEAS coorganiser Theatre Laboratory Sfumato as the organiser/coordinator of SEAS Coastal as a whole, SEAS became more of a visiting or guest performance with a distinct SEAS identity within the Varna programme. ITF desired to develop their festival into the public spaces, so their relationship with SEAS was a strategic one which suited both parties. With ITF acting as our intermediary with the Varna City Authorities (for example gaining the necessary permissions for the public events) Intercult had little need for direct contact with local politicians – a complete contrast to Odessa. ITF also provided the appropriate logistical, technical and marketing support – something we had definitely lacked in Odessa. They organised the press conferences and local media coverage. As a result, SEAS Coastal was a much more enjoyable experience for the artists and the project managers after the stressful opening in Ukraine.

Two advance research trips by Nedyalko Delchev from Sfumato and Natasa Zavolovsek, together with her assisten Nevena Tusheva, from Exodos Ljubljana in Slovenia had smoothed out most of the key organisational questions before the artists and SEAS staff arrived. With the experienced Romanian cultural manager Gabriela Tudor (who tragically died shortly after this project) and Corina Oprea, SEAS Coordinator at Intercult, in collaboration with the Cultural Department of the town council worked on the events in Mangalia, there was a strong team in place to receive SEAS. The management team and the international technical team was also split between Varna and Balchik, and then everyone was brought together again in Mangalia.

Read more

Preparations and finding partners, strong host, technical challenges, unexpected audience development, funding

Venues and more partners

SEAS Coastal in figures

Number of days: 11 in Varna, 7 in Balchik and 4 in Mangalia, over a period of 13 days

Number of events: 33 SEAS events in Varna and Balchik, 29 events in Mangalia.

Total audience: 6,300 people in Varna and Balchik, 1,300 people in Manglia. In Mangalia it should also be noted that the audience age range was comparatively much younger than other places on the SEAS tours – and quite a lot of them were really soccer fans!

Adam Jeanes Facebook diary
We arrive in Mangalia to discover that the mayor (who is up for re-election) has arranged for a big screen to be put up in the harbour to show the European Football Championship at top volume and is giving away free beer to attract a crowd (just to make sure?).  As we will be using an area next to the stage for Monday in the Sun and a house next door as our club this is not good news.  Some phone calls are made and a meeting is organised for tomorrow…

Press Coverage

Radio reportage Mangalia (Radio Romania International)

Odessa - Mangalia, one way - project Black/North SEAS 2008 (Observatorul Cultural)

Interculturalism and interdisciplinism: Project SEAS Mangalia (Observatorul Cultural)

Marketing Material

Gallery