Our play (“Cheerful Novels”) consists of a series of short comedy episodes and sketches, commonly between three and ten minutes long. These sketches are performed by a group of clowns and therefore, for the greater part, the show is humorous, funny and amusing. As our program generally involves audience participation as well, often sketches are improvised and worked out by the actors. “Cheerful Novels” is the synthesis of mime, pantomime and clowning. Music is also a very important part of our program. Each sketch runs its own little narrative within a scene build on buffoonery.
Giorgi Gomurashvili is Georgian theatre director, whose unique style have received both critic and applause. His theatre productions have been innovative and ground-breaking. He was born in Georgia, Tbilisi. Giorgi received a degree in Faculty of Theater Studied at Kyiv National I. K. Karpenko-Karyi Theatre, Cinema and Television University, Ukraine. After this he started studying in Faculty of Stage technology and theatre management at Shota Rustaveli Theatre and Film University, Georgia.
In the decades with followed he has worked in many productions. He worked as an actor many years in Shalikashvili Mime state theatre, Geogia, Giorgi is seen in many quarters of the industry as highly skilful author whose hard work, attention to little detail and willingness to take huge risks has created some incredibly beautiful and unique productions.
Theatre “Skhveni"; is established at the Tbilisi State University centre of culture and art, it was founded in 1999. Since then, the art director and founder of the theatre Giorgi Gomurashvili has staged various plays and spectacles; among them are:
Guest and the Host (in 2002); Balagan (in 2002); Samanishvili's Stepmother; (in 2003);
Seven Humoresque; (in 2004); The Wound (in 2005);Play the Buffoon (in 2006);
Clown Show (in 2007); The Little Prince; (in 2010); The Judgement Day (in 2011);
Cheerful Novels (in 2012); Snow White (in 2012); The Bremen Town Musicians (in 2013);
“Bernarda Alba’s house” (in 2013); Cinderella (in 2014); Let's Have Sex (2015);
Ice Queen (2016); "Salamura" (2017); "Marriage Proposal" and "Bear" (2017);
"Mary Poppins" (2018); "The Doctor in Spite of Himself" (2019); "Pinocchio" (2020);
"It's springtime behind the bars" (2021); "In the shadows of the moonlit night" (2022);
"Blue Bird" (2023);
“It all started with our troupe gatherings in the garret of cultural centre of Tbilisi State University. There we had enough space to rehearse and work on our performances. Later on, we managed to build a small theatre ourselves. According to its location, we decided to call our theatre “Skhveni" which in Georgian simply means the garret
Theatre “Skhveni" develops international traditions of pantomime and lyrical, philosophical clowning. Talented amateur students, with professional actors actively participate in different performances.
Each Year our theatre attends International Theatre Festivals abroad. Throughout the festival, our actors participated in different workshops and shared knowledge and experience with a wider audience of new international friends.
As mentioned above, we mostly perform in pantomime and that makes it easier for us to show our work to different countries and cultures because there are no language barriers.
We have achieved much success at the AITA/IATA International Festivals in Vratsa, Bulgaria 2013 and in Riga, Latvia 2014. Our Performance was named as one of the best of its kind."
