HAPS — Herceg Novi April Theatre Festival

The festival stages more than ten professional productions each year at the Dvorana Park hall, drawing companies from Montenegro, Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Each edition is shaped around thematic selections, giving the programme a curated through-line rather than a loose collection of shows.

Beyond the main-stage evenings, HAPS opens the process up: talks with the ensembles let audiences meet the actors and directors behind the productions, while children's matinees bring the youngest theatre-goers into the festival. The scale of the town works in the audience's favour — festival guests and companies share the same cafés and promenade, and conversations started in the hall tend to continue outside it.

Two weeks of theatre in one place also means comparisons the touring calendar never allows: styles, languages and stage traditions from four neighbouring countries seen side by side, night after night, in a single hall.

Performances are ticketed. For regional theatre lovers, HAPS is the rare chance to see the best of four countries' stages in one seaside town within two weeks — and April in Herceg Novi, the town of mimosa and gardens, is a reward in itself. Plan for several evenings rather than one; the thematic programming rewards those who stay.