Marcin Zawada is the artistic director of the Kielce International Theatre Festival and of the Teatr Żeromskiego, Kielce, Poland. This year he is a guest of the Showcase programme and Anita Angelova spoke to him about his impressions of the productions presented.

I was at the festival eleven years ago and I can see clearly that this festival is growing, but also that, that theatre changes. It it’s much more interesting than it used to be. And I must say it’s different than Polish theatre, which is not a kind of an accusation. It’s just different.

My favorite performance, the one I could invite to Poland was Lorenci’s “Orpheus”. He is known in Poland. I had two of his performances at my festival. So, I will think about it.

I remember that ten years ago young directors here in Bulgaria used to stage very old texts, plays I could suppose they were not really interested in. It looked like someone told them to direct them. Now, I can see that the young directors are freer or maybe they’re just more brave to take texts that are closer to them.

I’m happy to be here. What is a big hope for me is that now it’s summer, all the gardens and barbecues are open, but people still come to the theatre, even for not very easy performances sometimes. I don’t know if I don’t even envy you because it’s not that easy in Poland at this very moment to perform, the auditoriums are empty because people are somewhere else. So, congratulations that you have this kind of audience that comes even if they have a lot of other things to choose to do.

Now, about “Silk”. I can say that it was poetry theatre and looked a little bit like opera. And not because of the music or the images. I was thinking that we do not have such kind of performances in Poland, poetry comes to the theatre only sometimes. It gave me a kind of a trigger to think if we can have something like that in Poland, if we can use older or contemporary poetry in theatre. I don’t know, but it would be very interesting, because it worked here. I don’t know if we can transfer that performance that easily into Polish realities.

And again, I’m very happy to be here. I think the selection was much better than in the past. It’s a very good festival and more modern things and pieces are being shown now. The theatre must grow because we can’t lose young audiences and the young people need different theatre. I think that theatre people in Bulgaria have noticed that.