A Festival of Imported Importance: BIAF 2026 and the Provincialism of Prestige

The Theatre Times: There are at least two ways for an international arts festival to be provincial. The first is obvious: isolation, lack of money, lack of access, lack of connection to the international artistic circuit. The second is more interesting. It begins when all those problems have apparently been solved. The money is there. The stars arrive. The venues fill. An institution gains access to precisely the people whose presence is supposed to certify its international importance. And yet it continues to behave as if importance were something produced elsewhere and imported for local display.