MESS (festival)  The MESS International Theatre Festival (MESS) is a theatre festival that takes place annually in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is the oldest living theatre festival in the Balkans, programming international experimental performances and emerging artists. MESS was the largest theatre festival in the Former Yugoslavia and was named one of Living Theatre's international showcases in 1974. It surived the Siege of Sarajevo, during which it hosted directors such as Susan Sontag and Peter Schumann. It organized the first edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival in 1993 and still acts as a collective board member today. Today it is the largest theatre festival in Bosnia and Herzegovina and one of the largest in South-Eastern Europe. In 2009 it expanded its activities to the city of Zenica, which now hosts parts of the regional program. The festival was founded in 1960 under the name "Festival malih i eksperimentalnih scena Jugoslavije" (Festival of small and experimental scenes of Yugoslavia). It was founded on the initiative of Yugoslavian theatre director, Jurislav Korenić. It was originally conceived as an annual gathering of the country's professional theatre companies with the goal of presenting the best experimental theatre pieces of the previous year. The specificity of the concept quickly garnered a wider audience and secured visits from international experimental theatre companies, such as Living Theater from New York City, that named the festival one of its four major annual show-piece platforms. With the start of the Bosnian war in 1992 the festival's run was halted, only for it to be renamed and rebranded by a directorate of Bosnian artists and intellectuals, headed by theatre director Haris Pašović, with the desire to artistically resist the Siege of Sarajevo. Furthermore, the festival organized the first edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival in 1993 under the working title "Poslije kraja svijeta" (After the end of the world). During this period in time the festival produced numerous pieces by theatre directors such as Susan Sontag and Peter Schumann, who entered the besieged city to take part in the artistic resistance against the war. With the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords the festival was taken over by a team of young theatre professionals headed by newly-named manager Dino Mustafić. The first post-war edition of the festival hosted directors such as Giorgio Strehler, Frank Castorf and Peter Schumann.