Everyone is writing about this festival: KONTRAPUNKT.
As a result of the pandemic, with a delay, after more than a year's break, it returned to the theater halls of Szczecin as an art festival.
For many years we have been watching the performances of the festival, the so-called small forms, which evolved in its artistic program and tried to keep up with the changes taking place in the world around us.
It seems the event has finally found a formula that matched its name.
“Contrary to its name, KONTRAPUNKT is an interdisciplinary art festival. It is an extremely sensitive confrontation of various styles and languages, not only the stage ones, as well as a clash of cultures, because KONTRAPUNKT is international. In the mainstream of the competition, theater companies from all over the world compete for the laurels of the festival (with a high financial prize pool). The best independent theaters also compete for similar honours at OFF KONTRAPUNKT. Everything is accompanied by a rich interdisciplinary program of accompanying events. In addition to theater, music, literature, film, visual arts and performance are present here. To this juxtaposition one can boldly add the idea of Meeting, elevated to the rank of art, which binds all ... counterpoints. "
Out of dozens of festival offers, we chose 15 in order not to experience a dangerous excess. Our goal is not to follow all the proposals, but only to get acquainted with what is happening today in theatrical plays and accompanying them art forms.
We promise ourselves a lot of good impressions.
What I am writing here are not reviews, but only loose impressions and observations.
After the ceremonial opening at the "Pleciuga" Puppet Theater, with Krzysztof Soska, the vice-president of Szczecin, a performance from Barcelona "A House in Asia" was proposed for the opening.
"Through its original language (scaled models, video projections, live video editing and engaged performers), Agrupación Señor Serrano presents a spectacular western in which reality mixes with its copies, while presenting a ruthless, pop portrait of the decade after the September 11 attack - the germ of the 21st century. "
An excellent multimedia spectacle, the message of which, especially now, after the Americans have left Afghanistan, sounds particularly strong.
And Moby Dick symbolizing the victim everyone is hunting?
A moving spectacle at the beginning of the Festival!
Late in the evening, at the "13 MUZ" Cultural Center, a special and strange performance - a young Iranian's look on the interpersonal relations surrounding him in the regime Iran.
"White Rabbit, Red Rabbit" Nassim Soleimanpour (Iran / Germany)
"In" White Rabbit, Red Rabbit "a different actor plays each time. This performance needs neither a director nor a set design. The performance of Iranian Nassim Soleimanpour is a sensation all over the world. Although its author cannot leave his country - his text has already traveled almost all of Western Europe, it has been shown on stages in over 20 cities around the world, played in 10 different languages. Underneath the seemingly trivial story of turning a white rabbit into a red one, there is a much more complicated narrative. The author wants to tell about the experience of his generation who happened to live in Iran. He wants to show the cruelty of a world ruled by competing power elites. "
In our spectacle, the Szczecin actor Paweł Niczewski had to deal with the improvisation of the text with a rather inactive audience, whose participation was extremely important.
I'm afraid that the text's message did not reach everyone ...
