SHIZUOKA CITY, JAPAN

As Japan rebuilds after the earthquake and tsunami, it's apt that this year's World Theatre Festival Shizuoka under Mt. Fuji features several works incorporating revolution and reinvention. Take Bolívar, fragmentos de un sueño. Written by Geneva-based Teatro Malandro's William Ospina and directed by Swiss-Colombian novelist Omar Porras, it commemorates Latin America's independence from Spain through the eyes of Simón Bolívar. In June, Tadashi Suzuki's adaptation of La dame aux Camélias integrates 20 Taiwanese pop songs and other Asian cultural elements into Alexandre Dumas's classic love story. And essays written by American novelist Harold Brodkey as he was dying of AIDS inspire Italian actor Pippo Delbono's Questo buio feroce, which combines words, art, music and dance executed by a cast of social outcasts—the homeless, the mentally disabled—in an exploration of life and death. (Jun 4-Jul 3; (81) 54-203-5730; www.spac.or.jp/e/index.html)

VARNA AND SOFIA, BULGARIA

June's "Varna Summer" International Theatre Festival program is stretched with tension, mental and physical. Bulgaria's Galin Stoev directs a contemporary version of Pedro Calderón de la Barca's Life Is a Dream, about the struggle to change a son's destiny. CONTIGO features the corporal manipulations of a choreographer and a Chinese pole acrobat from Franco-Portuguese circus company O Ultimo Momento. And, in Rankefod, Danish dance artist Kitt Johnson evokes The Origin of Species with the shifting shapes of her body. (Jun 1-12; (359) 52-669-650; www.theatrefest-varna.org)

ZAGREB, CROATIA

This summer, Eurokaz Festival probes deep into the past and far into the future. Branko Brezovec directs renowned Croatian writer Miroslav Krleza's Salome, which alters Salome's role in John the Baptist's murder. More, more, more...future, by Congo-born Faustin Linyekula's Studios Kabako, questions the greed of past generations and looks forward with hope through Congolese pop and traditional rhythms. And the group Blitz, from Greece, experiments with the realm between film and theatre in Cinemascope, about the last 10 days of the world. (Jun 27-Jul 5; (385) 1-4847-856; www.eurokaz.hr)

LJUBLJANA AND MARIBOR, SLOVENIA

In Crossroads, to be presented this year by French Company The Beast, a performer contorts over the banks of the Ljubljanica River as part of the Ana Desetnica International Street Theatre Festival, the summer installment of Ana Monro Theatre's four seasonal celebrations. Ana Monro's The Cage, inspired by the novels of George Orwell, will send clowns to interact with a cage in the town square, and Spanish group Ens de nos's Troupe creates performances wherever its itinerant comedians decide to land. (Jul 3-Sep 7; (386) 1-241-6026; www.ljubljanafestival.si)

BRIGHTON, ENGLAND

Among the productions at this year's Brighton Festival are two darkly funny musical theatre pieces by Mexico's Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes. El Gallo sounds like a twisted version of A Chorus Line for opera singers. In it, a composer, director and group of singers rehearse for a competition in a made-up language, and learn too much about one another in the process. The company's second presentation, Monsters and Prodigies, is also opera-themed and takes a humorous look at the 18th-century phenonemon of castrati. (May 2-25; (44) 1-273-709709; www.brightonfestival.org)

ISTANBUL, TURKEY

Flight takes the forefront in this year's International Istanbul Puppet Festival. Bakirkoy Municipal Theatre presents playwright Ahmet Önel's Akli Havada, about the first person to fly with wings—Hezârfen Ahmed Çelabi—and how his story speaks to freedom in the face of oppression. Also on the program is New York's Concrete Temple Theatre production of Renee Philippi and Carlo Adinolfi's The Bird Machine, which uses stick and shadow puppetry and multimedia projections to weave a fable about the human yearning to live beyond our boundaries. (May 5-14; (90) 212-243-1602; www.istanbulpuppetfestival.com)