The festival, which forms an essential part of the harbor city’s identity, is also one of Poland’s longest-running theatre showcases. Kontrapunkt presents its audiences with the newest trends in contemporary theatre, confronting works by renowned artists with experimental projects by emerging young talents. The Kontrapunkt Małe Formy / Small Forms Theatre Review is first and foremost an encounter between the artists and a unique audience, and also an encounter between Polish theatre and the German neighbours.
This year’s competition programme includes Paw królowej / The Queen's Peacock, a play adapted by Dorota Masłowska from her novel, directed by Paweł Świątek at the Stary Teatr in Kraków. Świątek’s piece competes against two plays directed by Ewelina Marciniak, Amatorki / The Amateurs and Kobieta z przyszłości / The Woman from the Future, and Kaligula, directed by Anna Augustynowicz, Wojtek Ziemiliski's performance-lecture Small Narration, and Nancy. An interview by Claude Bardouil, the dance-theatre piece produced by the Nowy Teatr in Warsaw, the French Cheval, as well as a British puppet theatre piece entitled The Table.
The winning performance is selected in an audience poll.
Headed Towards Berlin
For decades the festival has been hosting German performaces and exhibiting works by German artists. Past editions have travelled to Germany, with showings in Berlin, Schloss Broellin, Pasewalk, and Greifswald. This year, the Polish-German trend has been recognised for the first time as a project in itself, and runs under the title Pomosty teatru – pomosty kultury. O wzajemnym oddziaływaniu teatru polskiego i niemieckiego / Theatre Bridges – Cultural Bridges. On the mutual influences between Polish and German theatre.
As part of this project, two German theatres present new performances. The Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz hosts showings of Notizen aus der Küche, directed by Egill Heiðar and Anton Pálsson, and the Deutsches Theater Berlin presents Sklaven. Einakter von Georges Courteline aus der Hölle der bürgerlichen Freiheit directed by Andreas Kriegenburg. The showings are accompanied by a panel discussion on the nature of contemporary acting. The organisers envision the aim of such a panel:
The meeting of experts from both sides of the border will allow us to analyse in detail the differences and similiarities Polish and German actors. The craft of acting developed differently in the two countries [...] and it was surrounded by very distinct cultural, social and political contexts. Today, when festivals have become the new forum for meetings between artists, it is more and frequent that a Polish director may stage a play in Germany, and a director from Germany may come to work in Poland. When the performers that speak different languages appear together on one stage, it is a special occasion for the juxtaposition of the art of acting from the two countries.
Being Greta Garbo
The festival programme lists showings outside of the competition, and one is the Polish premiere of Greta Garbo przyjechała / Greta Garbo Has Arrived, directed by Anna Augustynowicz. Written by Frank McGuiness, an Irish playwright and poet, it is inspired by Greta Garbo’s visit to the Irish town of Donegal in 1967. Few documents bear testimony to this event, and this pushed the author to give an unexpected shape to the turn of events in his play. Augustynowicz decided to cast a man in the role of the divine Garbo. In a talk with Justyna Jaworska for the Dialog magazine, she commented:
Greta Garbo is the embodiment of contemporary man’s longing for an illusion. [...] Greta opens the horizon of what is contemporary, she seems to be a whole: the divine joining of andros and gyne [...] But a woman in our culture still remains a creation "from the rib of Adam", and that is why I invited Maciej Wierzbicki to play the role of Greta. In the structure of the play, the figure of Greta functions as an alien, that, the moment it appears on the stage, allows us to discover the truth about the others.
The final show in the festival’s programme, Danuta W., is one the loudest, most political performances of the past season, with the indispensable Krystyna Janda in the lead role. The Kraków-based Teatr Łaźnia also brings their theatre reportage Niewierni / The Unfaithful, directed by Piotr Ratajczak, reconstructing real testimonies of apostasis in front of the audience. With texts derived from speeches and news reportage, the play displays the spiritual development of its protagonists through incidents and reflections that led them to leave the Catholic Church, asking why people brought up in a religious community decide to separate from it.
Burlesque, Stand-up Comedy and Puppet Theatre
The urban outdoors are taken over by artists from the French Transe Express collective, who perform their Drums of Death, flooding the streets of Szczecin with actors, acrobats, dancers, percussionists, singers and technicians.
For the first time this year, the festival hosts an evening of stand-up comedy, a burlesque show and a cabaret from the Klub Komediowy Chłodna from Warsaw.
A special programme for children is launched on the 12th of April as part of the Mały Kontrapunkt / Little Kontrapunkt series. Children are invited to take part in workshops and are able to view the best in children’s theatre. Companies performing in the series include the Pleciuga puppet theatre, Clown Tomi from the city of Kamień Pomorski, students of the Puppet Theatre Department from Białystok and Kiosk Ruchu Contemporary Dance Group. Eleven theatres in total are staging their work as part of the children’s series.
All of the performances are translated into English and German.
Anna Legierska
Translated by Paulina Schlosser, source: press release 9.04.2013