CMU School of Drama


Monday, November 28, 2016

Radical Theatre in Poland

HowlRound: After three years of honing my craft, debating theories about theories, and running in circles within the concrete bunker of artistic incubation that is CalArts’ graduate directing program, the momentum with which I departed shot me 5,863 miles across the globe to Poznań, Poland, for the 2016 Malta Festival.

2 comments:

Kelly Simons said...

I honestly don’t know anything about Poland or Polish theatre. The extent of my Polish knowledge is that it was invaded in WWII, and some of my family has Polish roots way back in our ancestry. This pieces was a refreshing look at Poland and not only it’s theatre but also its performance art, which can be different things most of the time. The description of the festival from the author is: “image and tradition as an off-beat, site-specific, radically-leaning all-inclusive arts festival complete with installations, music, and socially-geared group discussions”. Which when you think about it doesn’t really tell you much about the festival. I would be interested in learning more about these socially-geared group discussions; what social concerns do the citizens of Poland have? Are the Polish as divided as the US on their political and social issues? I’d like to learn more about Poland and its current arts scene.

Unknown said...

This article is one of the reasons why I want to travel the world because theatre outside of America is more real and impactful. They don’t care about the money but rather telling a story and impacting their audience. When I was London I could see this from the different productions I watched. There were shows that I saw that I instantly thought this would never come to the states because it wouldn’t make money. Unfortunately, people here in the US don’t like to see their real life on stage. They pay to float away and not be challenged. We in theatre try to make art that is challenging and we go see and those shows but most of the time those shows don’t make money or stay open long because non-theatre folk don’t like to work hard for a show they are seeing. They want to laugh and leave the theatre smiling because there was a happy ending.