The historic Romanian city of Sibiu hosts a wide variety of shows, packed into auditoriums and scattered across the streets and corners of the picturesque town. Polish artists take part along the side of performers from 70 different countries at what is the third largest theatre festival in the world. The selection of their works presented as part of the Focus Polska programme was chosen with the aim of rendering a rich variety of art from Poland.
The Focus Polska programme is opened with a screening of footage from the legendary Acropolis, a 1969 theatre performance directed by Jerzy Grotowski. Following the showing of this revolutionary piece, Sibiu audiences are presented with contemporary Polish theatre from a variety of artists.
Teatr Strefa Ciszy from Poznań present their open-air performance entitled Salto Mortale, depicting the bizzare story of pianos abandoned by the shore of a Polish lake. The critical and ironic No Matter How Hard We Tried by TR Warszawa, a performance which touches upon the grotesque and bitter reality of a contemporary Eastern European country, is juxtaposed with a more traditional staging of the dramatic and timeless masterpiece, as Teatr Provisorium from Lublin take on Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov to pose a contemporary question about the existence of God.
Another piece presented in Sibiu is Teatr ZAR’s Gospels of Childhood, a ritual-like peformance, which takes up the theme of the inevitability of death. ZAR is a multinational group formed in Wrocław, Poland, by apprentices of the Grotowski Institute during its annual research expeditions to Georgia from 1999 to 2003. The performances which form the Gospels’ triptych have been described as a powerful aural experience, with actors performing ancient funeral laments developed from their travels to the Caucasus mountains, Greece and Sardinia.
The festival’s audiences are also presented with a synthetic review of the 14th Biennale of Media Art which took place in Wrocław in 2011. The exhibition is entitled Wro 2011 Alternative Now Resume/On Tour and it offers a glance at the Biennale's showings, concerts, performances and happenings. The exhibition traces contemporary trends and artisitc movements in media art, and presents them through innovative installations and an original interface employed in the interactive elements of the display.
The exhibition is hosted by the National Brukenthal Museum, at Sibiu's Gallery of Contemporary Art throughout the period of the festival. It is open to visitors from 10 am till 6 pm.
The Sibiu International Theatre Festival is the leading arts festival in contemporary Romania, with a world class line-up of international performers and artists. For the past ten years, it has been a place for dialogue and meetings due to its wide range of projects, seminars and colloquiums, facilitating the presentation of performances from all over the world. Throughout its evolution, the Festival has become organised as a multifunctional device whose main concerns are a creative milieu and an anthropologic horizon widened through and by theatre.
This year’s edition of the festival takes place from the 25th until the 3rd of June, 2012.
The Focus Polska programme at the Sibiu International Theatre Festival is coorganised by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
Focus Polska programme of events:
• 25th of May, 2012
4 pm screening of Akropolis
7 pm No Matter How Hard We Tried / TR Warszawa
• 26th of May, 2012
8 pm Gospels of Childhood. Triptych / Teatr ZAR
• 27th of May, 2012
8 pm Gospels of Childhood. Triptych / Teatr ZAR
10.30 pm Salto Mortale / Teatr Strefa Ciszy
• 28th of May, 2012
8 pm Gospels of Childhood. Triptych / Teatr ZAR
• 29th of May, 2012
8 pm Gospels of Childhood. Triptych / Teatr ZAR
10.30 pm Salto Mortale / Teatr Strefa Ciszy
• 2nd of June, 2012
7 pm The Brothers Karamazov / Teatr Provisorium
Editor: SRS
Source: www.sibfest.eu, press release, culture.pl