Festivals
International festivals are a particular element of Polish theatre life, occasions to allow the artistic achievements of East and West to confront each other. To this end, there are such festivals as "Contact," taking place annually in Toruń, and "Dialogue," organised biannually in autumn in Wrocław, in turn with Kraków's "Dedications" (October) and Warsaw's "Meetings" (November). Aside from these, the most interesting events are "Theatrical Confrontations" in Lublin (October), the open-air "Malta" festival in Poznań (June), Kraków's "Ballet in Spring" and the Puppet Theatre Biennial in Bielsko-Biała.
One world-famous person who had links with 20th-century Polish theatre and was Pope John Paul II. His interest in theatre dated back to his secondary school years in Wadowice, where the teenage Karol Wojtyła worked in the school theatre. During the Second World War, he co-founded, with his old teacher Mieczysław Kotlarczyk, the underground Rhapsodic Theatre, a group cultivating the Romantic tradition of live poetry. After the war, as a priest, he supported the group and was also its critic, publishing reviews of its performances. Within his literary work, John Paul II also has written a number of dramas, the best-known of which are Our God's Brother and The Jeweller's Shop.
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Famous quotes containing the word festivals:
“This is certainly not the place for a discourse about what festivals are for. Discussions on this theme were plentiful during that phase of preparation and on the whole were fruitless. My experience is that discussion is fruitless. What sets forth and demonstrates is the sight of events in action, is living through these events and understanding them.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“Why wont they let a year die without bringing in a new one on the instant, cant they use birth control on time? I want an interregnum. The stupid years patter on with unrelenting feet, never stopping—rising to little monotonous peaks in our imaginations at festivals like New Year’s and Easter and Christmas—But, goodness, why need they do it?”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)