Metamorphoses and the seemingly everyday Every year, La Strada is a home game; and after 15 years it is time and again marvellous to experience the heartfelt emotion with which the festival is being received by the city’s inhabitants. But this year it will be a very special one: following on from last year’s collaboration with Maribor, this year we will co-operate with both European Capitals of Culture 2013, namely Košice (Slovakia) and Marseille. Besides international focus areas, which are also already being worked on for 2014, this year we pay particular attention again to collaboration with Austrian artists and the developments of our own city. This journey through Graz is about overcoming barriers, seizing the streets for both people and artists, utilising them as a stage, musical instrument and performance location. La Strada 2013 is an invitation to become acquainted afresh with our own city, to discover why Graz is also Lisbon or how it feels to traverse places through which as yet not many people have walked. We invite you to take a seat and experience how the seemingly everyday gives rise to artistic moments, to pause for a moment this summer, to venture a dance step and a glance skyward. How closely artistic engagement and urban development are linked is revealed not only by Willi Dorner’s project, which opens up new perspectives of the city and makes changes and metamorphoses visible. How traditional places can be experienced entirely anew, is displayed not only in the projects by Josef Klammer in Herz-Jesu-Kirche church and by Reinhard Ziegerhofer in St. Andrä Kirche church. And how virtuoso, cheerful, colourful and touching today’s (street) theatre and contemporary circus can be, is shown by performers, artists, musicians, actors and dancers in the 22 productions which will be hosted in Graz this year from 26th July till 3rd August, in order, together with you, to give birth to a festival.
Werner Schrempf | Artistic Director, La Strada Festival