This Autumn, students from the Complutense University of Madrid and participants of the DramaFest International Festival of Contemporary Drama in Mexico will have the opportunity to learn about Polish drama.
From 21 to 24 October, the Complutense University of Madrid will host workshops devoted to contemporary Polish drama as part of the project ‘Spanish Mosaic of Polish Drama’. The students of the Theatre Institute, where Spain’s pioneering Theatre Studies programme was established, will meet with playwrights Antonina Grzegorzewska, Tadeusz Słobodzianek and Piotr Tomaszuk.
They will be accompanied by Piotr Olkusz, editor-in-chief of the monthly magazine „Dialog”, who will talk about current developments in Polish theatre and drama, and Jarosław Bielski, co-founder of the Madrid-based Réplika Teatro, who will analyse texts with students from the perspective of a director and actor. Workshop participants will work with Polish plays translated into Spanish by Pau Freixa Terradas and Paula Blanco Barnés. These will be: Mozaika z term (Mosaic from the Baths) by Piotr Tomaszuk, Cerber z Beaubourg. Seans dramatyczny w VIII scenach (Cerberus from Beaubourg. A Dramatic Séance in Eight Scenes) by Tadeusz Słobodzianek, and Tauryda. Apartado 679 by Antonina Grzegorzewska, which, together with other plays by these authors, will be published in Spain in 2025-2026 by the Madrid-based publishing house Punto de Vista Editores.
Piotr Tomaszuk’s play is a new work, written in 2024 for a competition organised by the well-known Madrid-based company Secuencia 3, which produces and promotes theatre. The competition received 128 plays from 10 countries, and Mozaika z term (translated by Paula Blanco Barnés) made it to the final round. The protagonist is the Director, who falls into the trap of his own script.
Cerberus from Beaubourg by Słobodzianek (translated by Pau Freixa Terradas) was also written recently, in 2022, and presented to audiences at the Dramatic Theatre in Warsaw in the form of a staged reading (directed by Anna Wieczur). Its protagonist is the Artist, who is easily recognisable as Tadeusz Kantor.
Tauryda. Apartado 679 (translated by Paula Blanco Barnés) had its stage debut in Szczecin – the premiere at the Contemporary Theatre, directed by the author, took place in 2012. The play is inspired by mythology, and its protagonist is a contemporary Iphigenia who lives in Andalusia, where Antonina Grzegorzewska also lived for many years.
The idea behind the workshops is to be together in theatrical intensity – all participants from Poland will be present every day to discuss not only their own texts, but also to share their insights on their colleagues’ works and add their opinions on the state of contemporary drama and theatre. It is important for Spanish students to get to know playwrights in the flesh, to have the opportunity to talk to them in person about their plays, to say whether and why they see a place for them in Spanish cultural space, what interests them and what is not entirely understandable. The selected texts are largely universal, and the desires they contain, such as the need for recognition, the instinct for survival or the desire to leave the past behind, have the potential to become a good starting point for lively debates among theatre enthusiasts of different generations.
The project ‘Spanish Mosaic of Polish Drama’ is being implemented by the Theatre Institute as part of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage’s programme ‘Inspiring Culture 2025-2026’.
In November and December 2025, during the DramaFest International Festival of Contemporary Drama in Mexico, Polish theatre will take centre stage thanks to a programme of events called ‘Polish Focus’, co-organised by the Theatre Institute. Audiences in Mexico City and Monterrey will see the premiere of Dorota Masłowska’s play Między nami dobrze jest (No Matter How Hard We Try) (directed by Diego del Río, translated by Pau Freixa Terradas) and guest performances of Artur Pałyga’s Kazdego dnia jest mi żal (Every Day I Feel Sorry), presented by the Opole Puppet and Actor Theatre (directed by Katarzyna Dudzic-Grabińska and Karolina Gorzkowska; translated by Kamila Łapicka.
There will also be readings of two contemporary plays: Jolanta Janiczak’s I Feel Ashamed to Live in Such a World and Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s Cerberus of Beaubourg. Both texts were translated by the eminent Catalan translator Pau Freixa Terradas. These events will be complemented by the premiere of a Mexican drama staged by a Polish director – Norbert Rakowski will stage Arde todo mientras canta (loosely translated as Everything Burns When It Sings) written by Verónica Villicaña. The festival events will also include workshops: playwriting, led by Artur Pałyga, and theatre pedagogy, led by Maria Babicka-Janiszewska and Krystyna Mogilnicka.
