The Yerevan International Shakespeare Festival named after Vahram Papazian was founded in 2004 by director Hakob Ghazanchian and Shakespeare scholar Andrzej Żurowski. For the first three years, only festivals of monodrama performances were held and the mono performances with a Shakespearean subject were invited to Yerevan. Since 2004, the festival has been expanded and, in parallel with mono performances, big performances were also invited to Yerevan. The festival organisers are currently thinking of returning to the solo format, since that type of performance is a unique and rare Shakespeare laboratory, not only for the actors and the director but for the audience as well. For the last few years, during the Yerevan International Shakespeare Festivals named after Vahram Papazian we have presented the theatre groups of P. Brook, D. Donnellan and I. Brook, the theatres of Sh. Rustavelli and S. Abashidze (Tbilisi), the Artistic theatre named after A. Chekhov and "Et Cetera" theatre (Moscow), as well as famous actors and directors from various countries of the world.