The story
Manizales International Theater Festival in Manizales
Founded in 1968 as a Latin American university theatre gathering, Manizales's festival is widely considered the oldest continuously running theatre festival in Latin America. It has hosted companies from around 40 countries across its history, staging productions in theatres and public spaces throughout this steep Andean coffee-region city over roughly a week each year.
When Carlos Ariel Betancur, then president of Manizales's Sociedad Procultura, proposed a Latin American university theatre festival in the late 1960s, he could not have anticipated that the event would become, by most accounts, the oldest continuously running theatre festival in Latin America.