Members present:
Ramendu Majumdar ( Bangladesh ) President of Com Com
David Adams ( Wales )
Farah Yeganeh ( Iran )
Thomas Engel ( Germany ) ( arrive the 30th of May )
Agneta Hansson ( Sweden )
Malgorzata Semil ( Poland ) Vice-President of Com Com
Heino Byrgesen ( Denmark ) Secretary of Com Com
Anneli Kurki ( Finland ) ( arrive the 29th of May )
Dina Ziropolou ( Greece )
Mofidul Hoque ( Bangladesh )
Jennifer Walpole ( France ) Executive Director of ITI Worldwide ( arrive the
30th of May )
Agneta Hansson welcomed all those who had come to the board meeting and the
seminar. There were many board members and she was particularly pleased that
ITI's Executive Director, Jennifer Walpole would be present at the 2nd session.
Ms. Walpole couldn't attend the first séance because of a strike in Paris
The President, Ramendu Majumdar, chaired the 1st séance and opened the
session and thanked
the Swedish ITI Centre/Swedish Theatre Biennial 2003 and Agneta Hansson for
their warm hospi-tality.
Item 2 Adoption of the Agenda
The Agenda was unanimously adopted.
Ramendu Majumdar read the minutes from the Tehran meeting.
The minutes were unanimously approved.
Since Thomas Engel would not arrive till the 2nd session Agneta Hansson gave
a brief account what so far had developed in order to create a website for Com
Com. Since our meeting in Tehran there had been communications between Thomas
Engel and herself but so far there had not been time enough to complete the
Com Com website. Hopefully it will be ready when the board meets again
in Dhaka in December. The work is progressing with the implementation on the
website of not only The International Messages for World Theatre Day but also
The International Dance Day Messages in 2 languages - English and French.
It was decided that we should further discuss item 4 on the 31st at our 2nd session when Thomas Engel has arrived.
The next edition of The World of Theatre was discussed. Ramendu Majumdar and
Mofidul Hoque
informed us that so far 40 centres had responded to their call for articles.
The deadline for names of authors was May 1st but it was expected that still
more confirmations of authors would arrive.
Ramendu Majumdar gave a detailed account of his recent conversation with Ian
Herbert if he wanted to participate in this next edition of WoT 2004. Regrettably
due to a busy schedule on the part of Ian Herbert he withdrew from the editorial
work for the next edition. However he agreed to be a member of the Editorial
Board and do some editing.
It was also discussed if we should postpone the next WoT edition one year since
it would only cover a year and a half of theatre activities. There were several
arguments pro and con but it was finally decided that the ITI Congress in Mexico
will be the place where the next WoT 2004 edition will be launched. The Com
Com wouldn't like to lose continuity of the publication.
The next edition 2002 - 2003 will have articles from all of the national centres around the world. But due to the shorter time for preparation of the publication it was decided that the writers of the articles concentrate only on one theatre season up till October 2003.
The Committee then went through all the centres which had not yet responded and each of the members present was given the responsibility to contact each centre for a name of the author. The Committee wishes the next edition 2002-2003 of the book to have contributions from all the ITI centres all over the world.
The title of the seminar to take place on the 31st of May is: International Theatre Communica-tion. For whom? About what ? In what form ? What is possible ?
Agneta Hansson explained how she - as it was decided in Tehran - had involved
several participants from Sweden in the seminar. Theatre administrators and
theatre workers experienced with working internationally with theatre. The seminar
was to moderated by Claes Karlsson - programming di-rector for Performing Arts
at the Culture House in Stockholm. Participants in the seminar would be: Chris
Torch - Intercult, Niclas Malmcrona - General Secretary of ASSITEJ Worldwide,
Mi-kael Schultz - Swedish Institute and Christina Caprioli - choreographer.
From ITI Com Com the participants in the panel would be Malgorzata Semil, Farah
Yeganeh and
Thomas Engel. Ramendu Majumdar would give a short introduction about ITI and
Com Com and its activities.
The next seminar after Sweden will take place in Dhaka, Bangladesh in December 2003 at the invi-tation of the ITI Centre of Bangladesh. There will be an International Conference and Festival on the theme " CELEBRATING DIVERSITY ", December 9th - 15th . There will also be meetings from 3 committees: CIDC, Dramatic Theatre, Com Com. At the same time the Executive Council has its 117th session on December 9th - 10th. Formal invitations will soon be sent out.
The members had a dicussion on how Com Com should focus itself during the ITI
Congress in Mexico.
A suggestion was: How theatre introduces itself!!!
It was finally decided that Com Com should have a display of theatre programmes ( Probably inno-vative )and theatre magazines from the last 2 seasons. We will suggest each centre coming to Mex-ico to bring up till 5 copies of each for the display. There ought to be an official opening of the ex-hibition. Perhaps a guided tour. The person responsible is Malgorzata Semil.
The 1st seance ended at 5.30 pm
The seance was chaired by the President Ramendu Majumdar
Present were also now Jennifer Walpole, Anneli Kurki, Thomas Engle and Lugio Borgi - Italy
Thomas Engel gave further information about the Com Com website:
" an attempt to create archives of World Theatre Messages including translations
of the na-tional messages.
" the last edition of World of Theatre should be available on the website
after the book has been published. It will not, however, substitute the printed
version. Some copyright prob-lems have to be solved.
" what links should go on the Com Com website ?
There was an important question raised by Jennifer Walpole concerning the NEWS.
She needed feedback on how useful the publication is and if Com Com could play
a role in this publication.
It was decided that before June the 30th Jennifer Walpole should receive feedback
in terms of intel-lectual support rather than only physical support. It was
also discussed if there should be a database for the NEWS.
It was also discussed if the Com Com should be responsible for collecting seminar papers so they don't disappear. The question is: what happens to all those papers given at various seminars organ-ized by other ITI committees ? In some cases the organizing centre publishes the papers in a book in some cases they are just lost.
It was discussed if Com Com should create a profile. We ought to tell other people of the work we do - marketing our work!
Finally there was a lengthy discussion on the topic of having the same graphic ITI logo for all cen-tres. Many opinions were expressed.
The President of Com Com, Ramendu Majumdar, thanked the members present and in particular Agneta Hansson for a splendid stay in Uppsala and closed the meeting.
Heino Byrgesen
Copenhagen
July the 8th 2003