Why I come back to Theater Spektakel every summer

A few hours after the performance Multitud, I caught myself thinking only about the people I had met on my way to the theatre — about the families sitting on the grass by the lake, the children running between the food stalls, and the elderly couple who, holding hands, waited patiently for some other performance to begin.

Maybe that is exactly why I come to Theater Spektakel every year.

Of course the performances interest me. They are the reason I buy a ticket. But every time I go home, I realise that I have carried away far more than a single evening at the theatre.

This festival has an unusual ability to slow you down. The moment you walk down towards the Landiwiese, the city seems to stay a few steps behind you. People no longer rush towards the next meeting, phones are looked at less often, and conversations grow longer. To someone coming for the first time it may look like an ordinary summer festival by the lake. To me it has seemed, for years now, like one of the rare places where culture is not separated from everyday life, but is its natural continuation.

That is seen best in the audience. It is not only regular theatregoers who come here. At the same table sit students, families with small children, pensioners, tourists, and people who — quite by chance, most likely — decided to take a walk along the lake and stay a little longer. Nobody checks whether you know enough about contemporary theatre to feel at home here. It is enough to be curious.

That is something I have always liked about Switzerland. Culture is rarely presented here as something belonging to a narrow circle of people. On the contrary, it seems to me that a great deal of effort goes into making it available to as many citizens as possible. Theater Spektakel is perhaps one of the best examples of that. The programme gathers artists from different parts of the world, and at the same time leaves enough room for the festival to be a place where you will spend a whole afternoon, even if you do not see a single performance that day.

Sitting there, I thought about how often we forget that culture is not only what happens on stage. It begins much earlier — the moment we decide to set aside an afternoon for something that will bring no practical benefit at all. It will not help us finish work faster, earn more money or settle our daily obligations. And yet we go home with the feeling that we have spent time that enriched us in some way.

Maybe that is exactly why, for years now, I have been trying to make sure that the events we organise through HELSE are not only a performance or a concert. Of course we want the audience to enjoy the programme, but what happens before the start and after the end matters to me just as much. I love it when people linger a little longer in the foyer, when they meet, exchange recommendations for books or performances, and agree to see each other again at some future event. That is when I feel we have done something more than organise a cultural evening.

When someone asks me whether Theater Spektakel is worth going to, I never answer by listing performances. I say it is worth going because you will struggle to find another place where different languages, generations, artistic forms and people who would probably never have sat at the same table meet so naturally — if it were not for one summer festival.

If you have the time, do not plan only a performance. Come early. Take a walk along the lake. Sit on the grass. Have a coffee or eat something at one of the stalls. Listen to the languages mixing around you and watch the city slowly turn into one large open stage. Even if a performance does not win you over, it is quite possible that you will go home with the impression of having been part of something that a programme or a festival brochure can hardly describe.

— Evica