MESS is the country’s oldest art festival. The first festival in 1960 included names such as Giorgio Strehler, Peter Schumann, Jozef Nadj and Frank Castorf. The Festival, organized with special type of enthusiasm and devotion with the aim of attracting new generations to the theater now has a completely new structure of audience while retaining some of the old as well. With assistance from cultural grants from the US Embassy to BiH, the festival has hosted some of the most prominent theater directors in the history of theater such as Peter Brook, Robert Wilson and Eugenio Barba. At the same it has continues to foster its experimental element and discovering young talents who will become global stars on the theater scene in the next several years.

The International Theater Festival MESS has been innovative from its very beginnings, prepared in all the previous leadership through its history that, even in unbelievable circumstances in Sarajevo, creates a cultural refuge for all generations, risking and investing in the bravest and most interesting art projects. That is precisely why the International Theater Festival MESS is one of the leading festivals of this part of Europe. www.mess.ba