Description of organisation

Pôtoň is a theatre and cultural centre that was founded in 2000 and since 2008 it has been purposely operating outside the capital of Slovakia, in a village Bátovce - on the periphery. Pôtoň Theatre became a cultural, creative and educational centre, an institution whose aim is to enrich lives and educate people in the region. It is the only Slovak professional theatre established at countryside. Within the cyclic whole-year project Centre of Arts and Creativity it operates as a cultural centre at countryside and focuses its activities on creation, presentation and promotion of contemporary art. It promotes dance and theatre performances, audio-visual works, concerts, visual exhibitions, new media.
Our team and partners also lead professional workshops for artists, cultural managers, children and local community.
As a theatre we are considered as engaged and our productions tend to explore provocative social topics and issues. Our plays are usually based on a field research, they are defined by pressing social issues and characterized by a distinctive play with styles and different means of expression. The most distinctive plays resonate with themes such as poverty, national identity and xenophobia, search for home, decline of values, emigration etc.
The founders of Pôtoň give special attention to educational projects. These projects associate art with other fields (sociology, ethnography, history) and they focus mainly on audience education and development of critical thinking of young people. Pôtoň lead various educational projects, where the primary attention is given to the young generation. One of our biggest project is Psota na Slovensku (Misery in Slovakia) - project conaining whole-day events for youth and pedagogues, that contain arte-therapy, discussions, creative workshops, live libraries etc. We also organize several community projects and we provide support for Slovak and foreign artists through artist residencies. We operate as a cinema (art movies, European cinematography, summer movies in the theatre garden, etc.).
Our target groups are general public from surrounding villages and Slovakia (for cultural events, theatre productions, cinema), artists from all corners of Slovakia and abroad (for artist residencies, workshop-leading and performing) and young people (15-25 years old, for cultural events and educational projects, workshop audience etc.)