"Discovering Oman Through Theatre"

I am Alexandru, a film and television director from Romania. I am currently coordinating the Digital Stage of the "Radu Stanca" National Theatre in Sibiu and the video production of the Sibiu International Theatre Festival. It's my first time in your country and after five days I feel exactly at home. I think the most important values I have discovered are hospitality and friendship.

And the most unexpected and visually spectacular are the mountains.

Shapes that seem to be painted on the sky, lines taken from the famous German painting "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog". The same graphic elements I also found, with the great joy of discovering a fabulous new space of our world, at the "The Oman Across Ages Museum". Built to provide generous spaces to future exhibitions and naturally conveying the full color of light from the ocean shore, the project has been imagined with all the means of the present and the future and is equipped with an impressive technological arsenal for the visual representation of images and stories.

My professional training made me pause for minutes in front of a giant cinema screen symbolically built with the values of Oman's national day (the sides of the video image are 18 meters by 11 meters). Inaugurated this year, I am certain that the museum will become one of the extraordinary engines for promoting the history, culture and vision of a nation opening up to humanity.

Since the first day of the Aldin International Theatre Festival I had the chance to watch all the productions of the three sections: children's theater, street theater and adult theater. What I was pleased to notice, right from the start, was the professional atmosphere and the large number of volunteers I met. Even though this is the first edition of the event in Muscat, the level of preparation and involvement is very high.

Another extremely important aspect in the development of the event is to attract a diverse audience by creating new sections: books, debates, seminars, workshops and, last but not least, involving the community by inviting local associations and producers to participate in the festival.

In the following, I will focus on some values related to technology and creativity in the visual field. A good first decision by the organizers was the choice of unconventional spaces as venues for the festival performances. The first one, dedicated to children, is an indoor sports hall.

The second, both outdoor and indoor, is a year-round restaurant with traditional Omani cuisine called Rozna. Transforming spaces into hosts of culture and the arts is an extraordinary task for which I heartily congratulate those involved in organizing and funding the first edition of the festival. In both venues, technology is put at the service of artists. Two large, modern stages equipped with intelligent lights, moving heads and high quality sound are at the disposal of

guest artists from countries such as: Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Sultanate of Oman, Spain, Syria, Tunisia, U.A.E.

The installation of ambient microphones on each of the stages provides a great acoustic comfort for the audience. Computer-controlled lighting often replaces the set elements and creates real visual spaces and universes. The performances are

generally dominated by a minimalist visual discourse that gives the actors a chance to cut through the clutter and convey their emotion, story and message to the audience. An audience that filled the halls every night and reacted energetically at the end of each performance.

As a final thought, the success of an event is also measured by the number of smiling faces around you. From the first day I arrived in your country, I saw only smiling faces, only people happy to work or participate in the theater festival. And theater is the art that can bring the most happiness to those who watch it.