The Roman Theater, located in the urban center of Santiponce, will host the twenty-seventh edition of the European Youth Greco-Latin Theater Festival on March 19 and 20, bringing together over 3,000 high school students and nearly two hundred teachers from Andalusia and other regions. The initiative, promoted by the Ministry of Culture and Sports with the artistic direction of the cultural association ‘Svmma Cavea Itálica’, will offer five performances in morning and afternoon sessions.
This colosseum, built in the early first century, will host tragic and comic plays by classic Greco-Latin authors representing the roots of Western culture. As a novelty this year, a youth company from Portugal will be joining. This is the Thiasos Group from the University of Coimbra, who will perform ‘The Banquet’ by Plato, in Portuguese with Spanish subtitles. This will be the only play not performed on the stage of the Roman Theater, as it will be moved to the local House of Culture for translation purposes.
Audience of a performance at the Roman Theater in Itálica, in the urban center of Santiponce.
The remaining performances will take place during the two days of the festival in morning and afternoon sessions, at 11:30 a.m. and 5 p.m.: ‘Trojan Women’ by Euripides, and ‘Fortunetellers’ by Plautus, performed by the Balbo Theater Group from El Puerto de Santa María (Cádiz), and ‘Miles Gloriosus’ by Plautus, presented by the ‘Summa Cavea’ Group from IES Fuente Nueva in Morón de la Frontera (Seville) and ‘The Assembly of Women’ by Aristophanes, performed by the ‘Furror Bacchicus’ Group from the Faculty of Humanities at the Pablo de Olavide University.
In addition to this program, the Ministry of Culture and Sports, in collaboration with the Association of Greco-Latin Theater Festivals Prósopon, will make the texts of the plays available to the public, including educational guides for teachers and students through the archaeological site’s website. The event will also include other activities such as guided tours of the site, including some sessions in Latin, under the title ‘Italicae Lvstratio Latine‘, and educational workshops at the ‘Cotidiana Vitae’ center of the Santiponce City Council.
Through this event, the Ministry aims to bring Greco-Latin culture closer to young people through student-formed companies. This provides a better understanding of the origins of European civilization, emphasizing the current survival of its constitutive values. Furthermore, this educational proposal is one of the strategies to promote European values among young people included in the candidacy for the ‘Transnational Site of the European Heritage Label’, which Itálica aspires to jointly with Villa Adriana in Rome and the city of Athens.
All information about the XXVII European Youth Greco-Latin Theater Festival in Itálica is available on the website of the Itálica Archaeological Site.
