The UTE members decided unanimously that Gábor Tompa, current UTE President and General Director of the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj, will reprise his mandate for another 2 years.
The second UTE general assembly of 2022 took place on the 4th of December at the Stary Teatr (Krakow, Poland). UTE members from across Europe met to discuss important common projects as well as to elect the next UTE President and members of the Board. The UTE members decided unanimously that Gábor Tompa, current UTE President and General Director of the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj, will reprise his mandate for another 2 years.
Achievements such as reviving the UTE festival after an 11 years break, as well as successful projects like Digital Natives and Catastrophe and international exchanges, were decisive in the re-election of Mr Tompa.
The UTE Board was completed by Nuno Cardoso (Artistic Director Teatro Nacional São João), Waldemar Raźniak (Artistic Director, Stary Teatr), Tamara Vučković Manojlović (General Director Yugoslav Drama Theatre), Florian Hirsch (Head Dramaturge, Théâtre National de Luxembourg), Csaba Antal (Stage Designer, Hungary) and Francisca Carneiro Fernandes (Cultural Manager, Portugal).
The UTE has a busy time ahead. The Finisterra Festival, the culmination of the Catastrophe project, will take place from the 27th of January to the 24th of February 2023 at Teatro Nacional São João, Porto, reuniting 5 international coproductions from acclaimed European theatres.
Work on future projects, as well as the planning of the next UTE Festival are already in preparation.
Gábor Tompa graduated in stage and film directing from the I.L. Caragiale Theatre and Film Academy in Bucharest in 1981, having been the student of some outstanding figures such as Liviu Ciulei, Mihai Dimiu, Cătălina Buzoianu, founders of the world-famous Romanian school of stage directing. Since 1981 Gábor Tompa has been directing at the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj, Romania. In 1987 he became the artistic director of the theatre and after the political changes he undertook the managment of the theatre as well. Since 1989 he has been a professor at the Szentgyörgyi István Theatre Academy in Tg-Mureş. He founded the Faculty of Dramatic Art in Cluj and has run its directing programme since 1991. Gábor Tompa is the recipient of many awards and has received widespread recognition in Europe for his physically adventurous and conceptually audacious productions of classic plays. He is directing worldwide including France, Portugal, USA, Germany, Spain, United Kingdom, Austria, Hungary, Ireland, Canada, South Korea, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Serbia. He received the 2002 UNITER Award for Excellence for the many achievements of his career. He is also the author of several volumes of poetry and essays on the theatre. He has staged more than 100 plays and produced another 120.
The Union des Théâtres de l’Europe has nearly 40 members. It was founded in 1990 by French Minister of Culture Jack Lang and Giorgio Strehler, director of the Piccolo Teatro in Milan. The organization establishes sustainable forms of international collaboration in ground-breaking projects that offer a critical reflection of today’s society. Among the past presidents of the theatrical organization was Gábor Zsámbéki, who led the UTE after Strehler’s death until 2004, as well as Alexandru Darie, the director of the Bulandra Theater in Bucharest, and Israeli director Ilan Ronen, former manager of the Habimah Theatre.
