We will start the first day (June 23) from the inside – from the moment we are right now: our jubilee of forty years, half of the time, the place where strength and experience meet, but also awareness of limitations and the need to prepare ourselves for what (as we already know) may happen. The performance "Population Density" – presented in the non-obvious post-industrial space will be a kind of “exorcism”, a meeting with “demons”. Looking straight into their eyes we can deprive them of their destructive power and – continue our journey. 

8.00 p.m., „Gęstość zaludnienia” [Population density] – performance by the Kana Theatre (Szczecin), Gryf Nieruchomości – entrance from Starówka Embankment

What led us to this idea is the desire to face a space different than theatrical one. In this performance we use the texts of people who experienced the Chernobyl disaster, but we also refer in it to the concept of disaster in many other dimensions and use the entire network of associations also by visual means. While working on it, we evoked images of various places of disturbing, “heavy” atmosphere: a fish shop, a cellar, old factories... And now, while preparing the festival,  Łasztownia “came back” to our mind. We have already penetrated the area of ​​the GRYF Fishermen's Harbor many times. We accomplished there many site-specific projects (the first of them in autumn 2006, a few months after premature death of Zygmunt Duczyński, our director), numerous festival shows and intimate productions were presented there, we focused there our activities “in search of identity of the place”. This space is ambiguous, difficult, even painful, but also picturesque, marked by rough and not obvious history. I remember that we often called it “the belly of the city”. And now, in our very personal context, with the production which is both important and difficult to us, with an important festival, we decided to come back there. 

Dariusz Mikuła