As public arts institutions, festivals have very precise responsibilities, obligations and roles to play – both in relation to artists as well as to their public, at local and international level.

One of the core aims of performing arts festivals is their endless searching of new, original ways of formulating and understanding theatrical language, as well as developing a discourse which would enable the artists and the audience to talk.

Festivals should provide artists with the conditions in which they can work and develop their practice and to stimulate the free flow of people, works, concepts and ideas. Festivals are responsible for discovering new phenomena, movements, ways of thinking and producing the arts, as well as becoming open to ever larger and more diverse groups of audiences.

In our view, a festival should create the space for independent exchange of thoughts and experiences, offering artists and their public room and time to think, to experience, to talk.

It should leave however additional space for unexpected encounters, coincidences – and clashes.

In the programme of the 21st edition of Konfrontacje we include shows by artists offering new, fascinating theatrical languages, those who for years have been presenting their own ways of understanding performing arts and who lead many new artists in their wakes. This year, we invite you to see the performances by Agrupación Señor Serrano, a Catalan group (which is not yet known all that well in Poland) with its free and creative use of new technologies which won them the 2015 Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale for “developing a new theatrical language.” We will also be welcoming Toshiki Okada, one of the most important personalities of the world stage, along with the latest show by his group Chelfitsch. Konfrontacje Festival will for the first ever time also host Ivo Dimchev, another star of the independent stage. Gob Squad will be making a reappearance with the Polish premiere of their newest piece War and Peace, coproduced by Konfrontacje, along with Penny Arcade, a Lublin favourite with her new show Longing Lasts Longer. At the end of the festival we will invite you to see Heroes’ Square by Thomas Bernhard, directed by Kristian Lupa – it will be first Lublin presentation of this one of the most influential Polish theatre directors.

Importantly, the festival always emerges out of a specific time and place – thus the key element of our programme this year are shows presented by young Polish directors – mostly female ones – who penetrate the institution of theatre and ask questions regarding the roles and responsibilities of the artists and the art producers. These include shows which have emerged out of independent scenes, as well as those created by repertory theatres. All originate from the 2014/15 and 2015/16 seasons, and all take a close look at the rules and conditions of art production system, especially the one applying to contemporary theatre institutions. They ask about the role of artists and audiences, thematising the precariousness of contemporary arts practitioners, challenging hierarchies and authority relations within arts institutions. They seek theatre democracy – in relations taking place within theatrical institutions, as well as in the contact built up between artists and audience. They clearly show that the very essence of the theatrical form is inherently political.

All these shows are auto-thematic, but this does not mean they only address the subject of theatre. Quite the opposite: it is a very coherent and potent attempt to address the contexts of politics, society and economics we all function within.

It really does seem that we are witnessing the development of a new theatrical direction, which not only addresses issues of democracy on stage, but goes as far as introducing them into methods and structures of working and posing questions about the rules which govern the process of producing art. It is not by accident that all of the Polish artists invited to take part in this year’s Konfrontacje Festival are asking questions about their own subjectivity, taking up the challenge of challenging old orders and designing alternative models of democracy – all this at a time when discourse on the subject of what democracy should provide us with is as essential as the very air we breathe.