Dear Viewers and all festival participants,

Culture enthusiasts have always harbored the idea that we will see a world where no one will divide people into civilized and barbaric. Our work usually boils down to showcasing the potential of sucha utopia, in which the measure of a person’s worth is not their belonging to one culture or another, wealth, or power, but the bare fact of being a free and dignified person.

Unfortunately, we live in times that distance such hopes. More than ever, we are defined by divisions and hierarchies. The disappointment with global politics, which annihilates the existing order of democratic values, is immense. We have handed over agency to narcissistic elders who enslave millions. They have infiltrated our minds and poisoned our hearts. 

For me, the festival is a light at the end of the tunnel, a place where I give voice to artistic sensitivity, because artists today have the power of the last righteous, demanding what the leaders of the modern world have forgotten. It’s not just about diagnoses, but about the process of purifying our bodies, infected with hatred and fear. 

The artist’s radical gesture, negating predictable order, a commitment to imagination that transcends normal expectations—this is precisely what I seek, and I hope you will find reflections of these hopes in the festival program. 

In his poem “Waiting for the Barbarians,” Cavafy suspends his voice, doubting their existence. The inhabitants of the empire wait, some in fear of the possible end of their own world, others in hope for a new one. Or perhaps the barbarians are merely a story, a myth meant to spur a dormant kingdom into action? Perhaps it’s worth letting ourselves into the labyrinth of the festival, breaking free from the dull predictability of associations and thoughts for these 10 days? 

Theatre is, after all, a journey into the unknown, the potential for a great Negation of the disorder in the world that is considered order. 

Let the barbarians speak!

Bartosz Szydłowski 
Director of the Festival

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Graphic design: Victor Soma