In 1985, the date of the Edinburgh meeting to which Brugmans and Cimetta were heading to when they had the idea of proposing the first ACARTE Encoun- ters, the IETM had already had four plenary meetings and was rapidly growing. Looming ahead, there was the prospect of a common Europe, with the signing of the Single European Act in 1986, a treaty that \u00abprovides the basis for a vast six-year programme aimed at sorting out the problems with the free-flow of trade across EU borders and thus creates the \u2018Single Market\u2019\u00bb. Thus, after the first enlargement in 1973 (Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom), a second enlargement in 1981 (Greece), the entry of Portugal and Spain into the EEC in 1986 coincided with the Single European Act coming into force and with the launch of a series of policies aimed at fostering not only economic but also cultural and symbolic cooperation within a territory now perceived not as national but as \u00abEuropean\u00bb, and the same applied to its inhabitants. The ACARTE Encounters, with their threefold leadership, their supranational financing, their commitment to international collaborations and co-productions and the kind of aesthetics they proposed and the cosmopolitan public they drew in, already betrays an idea of Europe that fol- lows from the Union Act, a Europe where culture had finally made it into the cen- tre of the agenda.<\/p>\n

As Nicolas Ridout, Joe Keleher (Ridout and Keleher 2006) but also Maria Delgado and Dan Rabellato (Delgado and Rabellato 2010) point out, animated by the modernist belief in the \u00abinestimable value of culture as a means for com- munities to perceive and reimagine themselves, thus healing traumatic elements\u00bb, the creation of the Edinburgh and Avignon festivals in 1947 is directly tied to the need for European reconstruction and its inscription in a new world order marked by the tense balance of the Cold War. European theatre festivals, bringing a community together around a share set of values, would then reinforce a minimal understanding of what it means to be European, helping populations previously at war to see themselves as partners in a new project whose political and economic equivalent would be the Treaty of Rome and the stabilisation of Franco-German re- lations, united in a larger bloc, the West. These are also the years of the creation of the Teatro Stabili (in Italy), and the The\u0301a\u0302tre des Nations and the The\u0301a\u0302tre National Populaire \u2013 in other words, of theatre understood as a public service for a local com- munity within a nation-state; of auteur theatre companies rooted in their local communities, but which would often circulate throughout Europe as representa- tives of their home countries (such was the case with the companies headed by Brecht, Stein, Weiss, Planchon…). The May 68 events would unsettle these insti- tutions, giving rise to the \u00abfringe\u00bb and counter-culture phenomena \u2013 in which we might include festivals such as Nancy or Rouen, or institutions such as the previ- ously mentioned Mickery theatre. The willingness to rebuild European culture in eminently national terms runs parallel, broadly speaking, to state investment in in- frastructure and cultural equipment. In this regard, Christopher McCulough points out that in Germany, between 1948 and 1972, more than 200 theatres were restored, rebuilt or built from scratch. A similar process was taking place in France through the national plan to revitalise theatres, launched by Andre\u0301 Malraux in 1959, and through the creation of the Centres Dramatiques Nationaux, from 1946. In the mid-1980s, in the wake of the new french dance boom, there came the turn of the Centres Chore\u0301ographiques Nationaux.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Thus, if an idea of a (postwar) Europe made up of partner nations is broadly equivalent to an idea of great directors and theatrical venues well anchored in their territories, an idea of Europe (post-1968) made up of people who relate to each other by way of personal and aesthetic affinities corresponds, in turn, to a se- ries of marginal (or \u00abfringe\u00bb) experiments (of which the Mickery theatre is a prime example). It is these marginal experiments which, in the early 1980s, come together in the Informal European Theatre Meeting. And while the IETM began as a small network of non-conformist festivals, it would soon grow exponentially, helping to move the \u00abalternative\u00bb scene and the avant-garde into the mainstream, assisted by the political will to build a \u00abcultural Europe\u00bb. In 1987, when the ACARTE Encounters were created, the IETM is still a small network of small festivals and institutions, but in Portugal it found a small institution, the ACARTE, housed in a large one \u2013 the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation \u2013 that brought with it a great potential for experimentation within this field. However, its programming line diverts from that of Avignon or Edinburgh. It embodies a different idea of theatre, geared towards a different idea of Europe \u2013 one that in Portugal, as a result of the 48 years of dictatorship that kept the country away from postwar European developments, takes on very unique contours. The perception of what the theatre is, what Europe is, and of what \u00abthe contemporary\u00bb is or can be (to go back to the terms used by Nicolas Ridout and Joe Keleher in Contemporary European Theatre) has changed from the postwar period to this day, and this shift was reflected in the ways of doing and imagining both the art- works themselves and their recipients.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

__________
\n[1] Dia\u0301rio de Noti\u0301cias, 6-9-87. O Se\u0301culo, 10-9-87.<\/p>\n

[2] Interview with George Brugmans, Amsterdam, 3-6- 2011.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

[3]\u00abPina Bausch, Bob Wilson, Tadeusz Kantor, When can we see them first-hand?\u00bb, Carlos Porto (Dia\u0301rio\u00a0de Lisboa, 25-9-87) asks, going as far as to suggest the creation of another festival, to run parallel to the ACARTE Encounters, where a series of shows (which he perceived as essential) could be presented.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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