FORMA

The Festival is dedicated to the theatre of form and it is a continuation of the Polish theatre of images tradition of such artists as Tadeusz Kantor and Józef Szajna…

Theatre of images is a type of theatre and staging based largely on plastic arts. Plastic arts performances consist of elaborate scenes whose combination creates stage action to a larger extent than text itself. A very significant characteristic of the theatre of images is the possibility, thanks to scenes, of direct appeal to the audience’s and the creator’s subconsciousness (cf. Patrice Pavis, Dictionary of the theatre: terms, concepts, and analysis).

World famous theatres, artists who instead of words chose the language of plastic forms of expression: image, sound, body movements, puppet manipulation, composition, colour, light, rhythm… will give their performances during the festival. They put their ideas into practice by means of sundry, often interpenetrating theatre genres: mask theatre, puppet theatre, opera, dance and movement theatre, happening, plastic actions and installations, circus actions. It is a poetic and simultaneously a very dynamic theatre.

You will participate in a theatre event shunning the “immediate needs” journalism and ideology ubiquitous in the contemporary dramatic theatre. What awaits you instead are strong aesthetic experiences. You will see an original and brave theatre, a theatre of positive vividness and expressive world view. We direct timeless scenes and subjects at contemporary Everyman. His values, anxieties, dreams and questions will fill the Festival evenings.

The open structure of the performances will allow for their free, individual interpretation. Signs and metaphors in scenes will invite the audience to connect them with their own experiences and emotions. We choose the theatre of unrestricted thought for free people. We direct the Festival presentations at members of the audience who are sensitive to beauty: both young people and adults.

The performances will be given in theatres (Groteska Puppet, Mask and Actor Theatre; People’s Theatre, Cultural Centre in Nowa Huta) and will enliven post-industrial spaces (“Fabryka” Club in the former “Miraculum” Factory). We decided to hold many artistic events in Nowa Huta.

We offer carefully selected, exceptional productions by important European theatres from France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Poland. W are going to present 20 performances, 10 amazing productions performed by outstanding European theatres. Most of the Festival presentations are Polish premiere performances. Some artists will come to Poland for the first time. Especially for you we invited attractive, picturesque, spectacular performances, awarded at renowned festivals. This carefully prepared Festival programme will impart a sense of unique theatre meeting to the event.

Only in autumn and only in Krakow do we guarantee a refined arrangement of international productions by outstanding authors theatre of images.

Groteska…tempts with form. The ideology-free theatre - the theatre for free people!

Festival Director
Adolf Weltschek

Festival Programming Director
Zuzanna Głowacka