The organizers include “The Forum of Culture and Arts of Uzbekistan” Foundation (Fund Forum), the Youth Theatre of Uzbekistan, the Ministry of Culture and Sports Affairs of Uzbekistan and Uzbekteatr artistic association.

This year the festival will be held in the format of a creative laboratory and will conclude on 7 September in tandem with the National Dress Festival and Gulenko Awards Ceremony.

Theatre.UZ/2012 Festival will be hosting Tashkent and regional Uzbek theatres as well as troupes from Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Israel, Tajikistan and Russia. The festival will include workshops with British, German, Israeli, Kyrgyz and Tajik colleagues. Also, the second Gulenko Awards Ceremony for stage designers will take place on 1 October 2012 at the National Gallery of Uzbekistan. The bulk of the sketches and models of theatre decoration can be viewed at plays to be staged during the theatre festival.

The primary goal given to the festival is to study the creative process and the process of creating an art object and its development, presenting a look from within and outside where viewers will feel like participants of the process rather than consumers. This format of immersing the audience in the process of creating a play as an art object will give them an opportunity to understand the efforts specialists make and spiritual development. This will be aided by a series of workshops and a staging of “work-in-progress” plays as well as an exhibition of stage designers.

The festival will present stagings of works by literary luminaries such as William Shakespeare, Alexander Grin, Nikolai Gogol and Gafur Gulam. The programme offers world-famous works such as Romeo and Juliet, Faust, Rothschild's Violin and Viy among others. The festival will also include joint projects (reading with elements of staging) by Uzbek and international theatres such as “Threads of Silk” (UK-Uzbekistan-Tajikistan-Kyrgyzstan) and “Hoja Nasreddin’s Five Wives” (Uzbekistan-Tajikistan-) as well as Uzbek-Israeli and Uzbek-German projects. The full plays will be available to view at the next festival in 2013.

The repertoire of this year’s festival is diverse and offers plays of various genres on eternal themes filled with deep meaning that are certain to make an impression even on the most demanding viewers. As in previous years, the upcoming plays will be presented in various languages, namely Uzbek, Bulgarian, Russian and Kyrgyz.

In addition to theatrical stagings, the Youth Theatre of Uzbekistan will host workshops by Uzbek and British theatres as part of the International Theatre Festival as well as a meeting with Iddo Netanyahu, the author of “A Happy End” and with participants of the project. The National Institute of Arts and Design will host a workshop by German artist Lutz Hoffmann. This will be followed by a lecture on the history of Israeli theatre at the State Institute of Art and Culture of Uzbekistan.

Since its inception the Fund Forum has overseen a series of projects to contribute to the development of theatre art and to build cultural ties between Uzbek and international theatre professionals. The Foundation has provided support in Uzbek theatre teams’ participation in international festival and competitions, organised tours abroad and provided assistance in running international theatre projects in Tashkent.