A counter perspective

The point of departure for this report on the 51st Counterpoint Retrospective of Small Theatrical Forms in Szczecin (15-24.04.2016) is the verdict of the jurors and the audience. Kwaśniewska uses these to draw hypothetical conclusions on popular criteria for evaluating plays. Without undermining these, shes attempts to take a somewhat different perspective. Analyzing Wars I Did Not Survive by Agnieszka Jakimiak (script) and Weronika Szczawińska (director), Deep Dish by Liquid Loft, and notallwhowanderarelost by Benjamin Verdonck, she wonders if “their equivocal message (suspended between meaning and the abstract), and above all, their unusual strategies for communicating with the audience and - in terms of the two foreign productions - their disruption of an anthropocentric vision of the world,” made them festival “failures” (only Verdonck’s play was mentioned in the verdict).