Batumi Ilia Chavchavadze State Drama Theatre
Adjara's main drama company, playing on three stages in a restored 1930s theatre on Theatre Square.
Theatre in Batumi is dated from a performance given by amateurs in July 1879, and the town built its first playhouse, seating about four hundred and fifty, five years later. The present building on Theatre Square went up in 1937, a columned block that closes the square in front of the Neptune Fountain, a copy of a nineteenth-century Bolognese original brought to Batumi in the 1960s. The company takes its name from the writer Ilia Chavchavadze and is the principal drama theatre of Adjara.
A thorough reconstruction carried out between 2015 and 2018 renewed the fabric and stage machinery and gave the theatre three playing spaces: the main auditorium, an experimental stage and a small studio. A museum attached to the theatre holds photographs, designs and archival material from past productions. The repertoire combines Georgian drama with translated foreign plays, and the building also hosts festivals, concerts and exhibitions.
Highlights
- Columned 1930s theatre closing Batumi's Theatre Square
- Main, experimental and studio stages after the 2015–18 rebuild
- Theatre museum of production photographs and designs
- Neptune Fountain standing directly in front of the entrance
