The performance The Master and Margarita directed by Janusz Opryński inaugurated this year’s edition of the Konfrontacje Teatralne. The Festival takes place between September 25th – October 30th, 2020. Due to the pandemic situation, the programme has been limited significantly. Unfortunately, this year the Festival could not feature international artists, as a result of travel bans and restrictions connected with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Festival’s audience will have an opportunity to see two more productions by the head of the Provisorium Theatre. The Festival will also feature premieres: new performances by InVitro Stage and neTTheatre as well as four mini-productions created especially for Konfrontacje.

A series of events under the title And what now? consists of four original, post-pandemic performances combined with a theme “hope”. The performances, commissioned by the Festival, they will be prepared by invited artists: Anna Gryszkówna, Marcin Liber, Maciej Gorczyński, and Jan Hussakowski. All directors will be working on their show in the same conditions and they have a limited time to prepare their works. The starting point for the performances are literary works selected by the makers.

Another commission is Counting-out game – an experimental project by Eva Rysova, which refers to Seven lines, a project she carried out last year during TopOFFestival in Tychy. For four days, the performances will be adding one to another, thus counting down the time towards the real opening.

Łukasz Witt-Michałowski has, in turn, prepared a premiere of the performance Margules. Absence, inspired by the biography of Ludwik Margules. He was an artist of Polish origin who was highly appreciated in Mexico and put on a par with the great Polish avant-gardists – Jerzy Grotowski and Tadeusz Kantor.

The audience can also see Little forest, short dream directed by Paweł Passini, based on the “Midsummer Night’s Dream” by Shakespeare. It is a diploma performance by the graduates of the Dance Theatre Department in Bytom, a branch of the AST National Academy of Theatre Arts in Cracow.

There are three performances directed by Janusz Opryński in the programme: The Master and Margarita, which opened the Festival at the Courtyard of the Lublin Castle; Everything flows and Demons. Together, they constitute three acts of struggle with the Russian vision of humanity – three views on evil, and three responses to the terrible suspicion that man is responsible for this evil.

This year’s edition of the festival is accompanied by the forum Critical time/ Kairos. The Impossible Happens, in which eminent humanists, people of science and culture will talk with the leaders of the business world.