A Global Crisis in a Contested Space: Curating the Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival 2020

Abstract

The article aims to examine the interconnectedness between a global health crisis and a performing arts festival, within a contested space. The COVID-19 global health crisis interacted with the geogra-phy of Cyprus and Nicosia, a space defined by its separating line, in the context of the Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival 2020. As a result, part of the theatrical praxis has come to be re-defined based on the new emergency of the global health crisis. It has reframed much of the praxis that rests in the gap between a political act and an interventionist practice. The article firstly presents the curatorial approach as that emerged from the 2019 Festival with the interplay between methodology and con-tent, leading to the formulation and implementation of the 2020 festival as a physical and digital event in the midst of the pandemic. The maneu-vering through the limitations of the health crisis, fostered processes of newly formulating the Open Call, cancelling and postponing, creating new norms and conditions to maintain the inclusive character of the Festival and create new audiences. This process resulted in redefining the contested space itself, and the notions of the ‘marginal’, the ‘stranger’ and the ‘other’ in Cyprus, as well as part of the digital and international dimensions of the Festival.