R.E.A.D #10 festival - Day 4

R.E.A.D#10 festival Helsinki
This year the festival takes place on 16th and 19th of October at Post Theatre Collective Studio in Pengerkatu 11 a 3. The 10th edition of the festival brings plays from various geographical locations and will be performed in English.
R.E.A.D is a yearly reading drama festival organized in Helsinki by Post Theatre Collective. The festival which was established in 2014 by David Kozma is an arena that offers the opportunity to get acquainted with plays that have not been performed in Finland before.
R.E.A.D brings together the Finnish audience and local and international theatre makers including playwrights, actors, and directors in an intimate environment. The festival gives a grassroot stage to plays that might not have the possibility of having a stage in Finland, with the hope to influence and diversify the program of the bigger theatre stages in the country.

PROGRAM
October 19
18:30
Sivan Ben Yishai: Like Lovers Do (Memoirs of Medusa)
Directed by Vera Boitcova
With Tuija Hanhikoski, Heli Hytinen, Tuike Oja, Sara Ritala, Johanna Valle.

In the myth, Medusa is raped by the god of the seas, whereupon she transforms into a winged figure with snake hair, the sight of which turns everyone to stone. Medusa's violent, kaleidoscopic memoirs are Sivan Ben Yishai's dedication to all lovers, listing moments of our collective memory: between desire and violence, between porn and sexual fantasies, between political attacks and the family's habit of looking the other way. In an only apparent counter-scenario, five young girls imagine together the dream man of their future, themselves involuntarily as the perfect attribute at his side. On a third narrative track, the author creates a literal reversal of traditional narrative patterns: A woman grabs a knife, leaves the crime scene of the marital bed, hijacks a crowded bus and puts it into reverse to collect and decompost the century story lines and all the bruised human love flesh. Couldn't it become humus for an eco-sphere of feminist narratives?


Sivan Ben Yishai, born in 1978 in Palestine/Israel, lives in Berlin since 2012. Her plays have been and are being staged very often. With LOVE/ An argumentative exercise, she has been invited to Mülheimer Dramatikpreis in 2020. With WOUNDS ARE FOREVER (Self-Portrait as the national poet) she won the Mülheim Dramatikpreis in 2022. The same year she has been invited to Berliner Theatertreffen with Like Lovers Do (Memoirs of Medusa), directed by Pınar Karabulut, a production of Münchner Kammerspiele.

Trigger warning:
The text contains many descriptions of sexualizsed acts of violence which could have a debilitating and re-traumatising effect.

20:00
Festival ending party with DJ Pietu

The festival is free of charge but requires registration.
In collaboration with Nordic Drama Corner, Marta Fluvià Agency and Eurodram - European network for drama in translation.
With the support of Arts Council of Finland and City of Helsinki