NORMALLY at this time of year, Keti Dolidze would be in Edinburgh. As artistic director of the Georgian International Festival of Theatre (GIFT), an event inspired by Edinburgh's theatrical history, her ties to the Scottish capital go back more than two decades.
Last year her daughter Tamara was here too, performing on the Fringe in The Dress, a Georgian play set amid the 1993 civil conflict. At the same time, Dolidze directed Dario Fo's The Open Couple, performed in Georgian with English subtitles, earning five-star reviews.
There is a strong Georgian presence at the Edinburgh International Festival this year, with its theme of Artists without Borders. It includes the Georgian State Ballet, headed by the passionately patriotic prima ballerina, Nina Ananiashvili, who this week staged a local war of words with the Russian conductor, Valery Gergiev.
Dolidze also helped the EIF director, Jonathan Mills, bring the Georgian Anchiskhati choir to Edinburgh this year. But right now she is in Tbilisi, in a country where Russian and Georgian troops are still in a one-sided face-off.
Over the telephone she begs her Edinburgh friends – Assembly director William Burdett Coutts among them – to do what they can to support the Georgians. "During the Edinburgh Festival I really want William and everybody to raise their voices," she says. "I will be very thankful if there will be actions towards Georgia, to help Georgian refugees. All the world is supporting that. I want Scottish and British and international actors to be beside us."
Dolidze speaks proudly about Georgia's rich tradition of Shakespeare productions, in English and in translation, and of "exceptional" Georgian cinema. But she has also bitterly described how the great Georgian actor, Ramaz Ioselliani, narrowly escaped when his country house was burned.
Keti Dolidze, centre and inset below with Vanessa Redgrave in Tbilisi. Georgian ballerina Nina Ananiashvili, right, had a war of words this week with Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, left
The future of this year's October festival in Georgia is in doubt, she says. "When Georgia is so destroyed, how can I ask anybody for money for the festival? Let everybody come from outside for free, if they have money for travel; we can give them a home, give them food, let them present theatre."
In 1983 Dolidze met the radical Scottish playwright and director, John McGrath. "He came to Georgia, and was completely in love with Georgian theatre," she says.
Four years later, the Georgian actors triumphed at the Edinburgh Festival, with the help of McGrath and Burdett-Coutts. They won a Scotsman Fringe First for Don Juan, by the Marjanshili Theatre, which Burdett-Coutts saw on a trip to Tbilisi.
"Since then, every year, we have presented Georgian culture on a big and wide scale," Dolidzi says. It was a two-way exchange. Burdett-Coutts and an Assembly-based team played a pivotal role in starting the GIFT in Tbilisi. "Georgians are the most wonderful people," the Assembly director says, "They are a very theatrical nation and the production work they do there is staggering. The quality of acting is some of the best in the world."
Two Georgian shows, Richard II and The Caucasian Chalk Circle, performed in the early 1980s by the Rustaveli Theatr, are rated among the finest productions ever seen at the EIFF, he says.
"Part of what Edinburgh is about is cultural exchange and the Georgians will want to keep coming," Burdett-Coutts adds. Assembly has one Georgian showcase this year: an exhibition by the Tbilisi artist Otar Imerlishvili, who has been bringing his work here for several years.
A delegation from Scotland went to the tenth anniversary GIFT last year, points out Jean Cameron, a producer of the Glasgow International art festival and a key player in Scottish and Georgian cultural connections.
In 1993, when Georgia erupted into civil war, its performers and artists still found a way to come here. "They have had extreme events in their own country while they've been in Edinburgh and have looked at the Festival as a model, growing as it did out of post-war Europe, with culture as a tool to rebuild relationships," Cameron explains.
Scotland has helped to send international acts to Georgia – ranging from one of our finest actresses, Vanessa Redgrave, to Salsa Celtica and DJs from Edinburgh's fashionable club scene.
"Scotland has shifted and Georgia has shifted: we are seeing a small nation grappling with its sense of national identity and using its self-confidence and its culture. I think we are both going through that at the same time," Cameron says.
But Edinburgh has also helped a new generation of Georgian talents, she adds, including Eka Mazmishvili, now director of the Marjanshivili Theatre. The young composer Gogi Dzodzuashvili brought his music for King Lear to Edinburgh in 1996 and is now recognised across Europe for his compositions for film and theatre.
"Edinburgh nurtured these artists because it gave them the critical profile for their work," says Cameron, "which was really meaningful when they went back there."
The full article contains 837 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
