Georgian Parliament introduces bill to amend control of state theatres

Georgian Dream and its satellite party People’s Power have registered amendments to the Law on Professional Theatres in the parliament which would make the theatre director the sole head of state and municipal theatres. Many participants in the ongoing anti-government protests are representatives of the arts sector.

The bill came as part of a legislative package introduced on Monday containing amendments to six different laws.

According to the proposed amendments, the two-tier model of theatre management will be abolished and the theatre will be headed solely by the theatre director as opposed to joint management together with the artistic director.

The procedure and grounds for appointing and dismissing a theatre director were also amended.

According to the explanatory note attached to the legislative amendments, under the current law, the artistic director is the general head of the theatre, who determines its creative direction and is responsible for the functioning of the theatre, while the position of the theatre director involves the performance of the theatre’s administrative-technical, organisational, and financial activities.

‘This form of theatre management is not flexible and cannot provide solutions to modern challenges, therefore, it is necessary to combine the two positions and define the theatre director as the sole head of the theatre, who will carry out the theatre’s creative, financial, administrative, technical, and organisational activities’, the explanatory note stated.

‘In a professional state theatre established by the Ministry, the theatre director is appointed by the Minister at their own discretion. The Minister is also authorised to appoint the theatre director on the basis of a competition, or upon the nomination of the Recommendation Board or the Artistic Council or to refuse to appoint the candidate nominated by them and appoint the director at their own discretion’, the draft amendments read.

According to the bill, this applies to state theatres established by Georgia’s Ministry of Culture as well as the state theatres of the Autonomous Republics of Adjara and Abkhazia.

In a professional municipal theatre, the theatre director would be appointed by the mayor of the municipality at their discretion.

The draft amendments also define the grounds for which a theatre director can be dismissed.

In addition, the draft legislation defined the possibility of appointing a theatre director through a competition, which, according to the explanatory note, ‘will help attract and interest talented young people and people employed in this field’.

Georgia’s opposition perceived the proposed changes to the law as an attempt by the ruling Georgian Dream party and its satellites in parliament to tighten control over institutions working in the field of culture.

A member of the opposition group Strong Georgia Dea Metreveli stated that the proposed changes ‘serve only one purpose — to subject theatres to the regime’s party vertical as strictly as possible’.

She said that changes ‘are of a repressive nature and do not serve to strengthen the Georgian theatre’.

‘With these changes, we see a kind of punitive operation carried out by the regime against free Georgian theatres, which have recently taken a very principled and dignified position against the violent and illegal policies pursued by the regime in the country’, she stated.

The Vaso Abashidze State New Theatre announced a strike after its actor Andro Chichinadze was detained on criminal charges at a pro-European rally.

Several representatives of the arts have been and are being prosecuted for administrative offenses at pro-European rallies — they are mainly accused of blocking the road.

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Following the government’s post-election decision to suspend EU membership negotiations until 2028, Georgians across the country have held daily protests for more than 90 days.

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The protest also coincided with the 104th anniversary of the Red Army’s seizure of Georgia, resulting in its annexation into the Soviet Union.

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