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Why Brave Festival?
For the last couple of years various people have constantly urged me to organize a theatrical festival in Wroclaw. However, after years of visiting festivals in Poland and abroad I was tired of the identical format dominating everywhere: let’s show a product and let’s see a product. Festivals reduce artists’ work to the dimension of a product only, a commodity for consumption. They are not interested in the work process, its context, or what the work means to people. I didn’t want to repeat a similar format, but I had no answer to this, no concept. I was searching and asking myself the same question over and over again: “Why is this festival really needed?”
What is important today?
I was also asking myself another question, one that Richard Demarco, the founder of the Edinburgh festival, asked himself fifty years ago: “What is important today?” Demarco said to me: “When in 1948 we founded the festival in Edinburgh we aimed to reintroduce German culture to Europe”. This answer was very important for me. Over ten years ago I met Swiss actress Lee Wyler, who had a good chance to become a successful actress, but many years back she found herself in India and Tibet. There she saw many children thrown out of their culture and houses, and she decided to take care of them. Together with a Tibetan doctor, Akong Tulku Rimpoche, she founded ROKPA, an organization which for the past 25 years has been reconstructing Tibetan culture, rebuilding Tibetan schools, hospitals and monasteries. ROKPA helps children preserve their own language, songs, dances, traditions and spirituality.
Mexico
In August 2005, I went to Mexico following in the footsteps of the great Antonin Artaud, a French actor, director and theater theoretician. In the 1930s, he visited the Tarahumara Indians, who are the last of the 96 Mexican tribes that had survived colonial conquests. This meeting inspired the French genius to create the theory of the “theater of cruelty” which not only changed the shape of 20th century European theater, but also influenced its greatest artists including Brook and Grotowski. I thought that if that encounter had such a great influence on Artaud, perhaps I would experience something important too. I went to look for the Tarahumara, but… I did not find them. I did not find them in Sierra Tarahumara, in the mountains, because impressive fast roads had been built there and the tribes started to flee farther and farther away. I had no guide to ride on horseback for a day or two. Nevertheless, I met a man who had spent the past dozen or so years protecting that culture. He told me: "They won’t make it on their own. They don’t know what money is, what the power of money is, they know nothing about human rights because they live in such harmony with nature that their moral codes are an obvious part of their lives. They need no written codes, as they don’t know what a lie is”.
Another problem in Sierra Tarahumara is that drug traffickers are forcing the Indians to work on their plantations. If the Indians disagree, they are either driven from their own land or killed. Two of the man's friends had recently been killed because they wanted to oppose the traffickers. That is why the man makes films, collects ancient songs, legends and dances, and supports Indians financially so that they stay with their tribes. He understands the need to protect this culture, one of thousands of cultures – I could say – from the margins of the world.
Brave people festival
When these facts, these people and stories really got through to me, I understood what festival we had to create: the Brave Festival – the festival of brave people, people who speak about where they come from, what their values are and what their tradition and spirituality is. A festival not about works of art, but about art through which it is possible to save and protect thousands of forgotten, abandoned and forlorn cultures and people. We had to create a festival to prevent expelling people from their own cultures and sensitivity; a festival about a world which is vanishing and will die if we do nothing to hold this process back, at least a bit. A festival of people who do not accept the models promoted by mass culture, people searching for the deepest possible sources of inspiration – the inner one. Sensitive and tolerant people who are not afraid to extend their sensitivity.
What is important today?
I was also asking myself another question, one that Richard Demarco, the founder of the Edinburgh festival, asked himself fifty years ago: “What is important today?” Demarco said to me: “When in 1948 we founded the festival in Edinburgh we aimed to reintroduce German culture to Europe”. This answer was very important for me. Over ten years ago I met Swiss actress Lee Wyler, who had a good chance to become a successful actress, but many years back she found herself in India and Tibet. There she saw many children thrown out of their culture and houses, and she decided to take care of them. Together with a Tibetan doctor, Akong Tulku Rimpoche, she founded ROKPA, an organization which for the past 25 years has been reconstructing Tibetan culture, rebuilding Tibetan schools, hospitals and monasteries. ROKPA helps children preserve their own language, songs, dances, traditions and spirituality.
Mexico
In August 2005, I went to Mexico following in the footsteps of the great Antonin Artaud, a French actor, director and theater theoretician. In the 1930s, he visited the Tarahumara Indians, who are the last of the 96 Mexican tribes that had survived colonial conquests. This meeting inspired the French genius to create the theory of the “theater of cruelty” which not only changed the shape of 20th century European theater, but also influenced its greatest artists including Brook and Grotowski. I thought that if that encounter had such a great influence on Artaud, perhaps I would experience something important too. I went to look for the Tarahumara, but… I did not find them. I did not find them in Sierra Tarahumara, in the mountains, because impressive fast roads had been built there and the tribes started to flee farther and farther away. I had no guide to ride on horseback for a day or two. Nevertheless, I met a man who had spent the past dozen or so years protecting that culture. He told me: "They won’t make it on their own. They don’t know what money is, what the power of money is, they know nothing about human rights because they live in such harmony with nature that their moral codes are an obvious part of their lives. They need no written codes, as they don’t know what a lie is”.
Another problem in Sierra Tarahumara is that drug traffickers are forcing the Indians to work on their plantations. If the Indians disagree, they are either driven from their own land or killed. Two of the man's friends had recently been killed because they wanted to oppose the traffickers. That is why the man makes films, collects ancient songs, legends and dances, and supports Indians financially so that they stay with their tribes. He understands the need to protect this culture, one of thousands of cultures – I could say – from the margins of the world.
Brave people festival
When these facts, these people and stories really got through to me, I understood what festival we had to create: the Brave Festival – the festival of brave people, people who speak about where they come from, what their values are and what their tradition and spirituality is. A festival not about works of art, but about art through which it is possible to save and protect thousands of forgotten, abandoned and forlorn cultures and people. We had to create a festival to prevent expelling people from their own cultures and sensitivity; a festival about a world which is vanishing and will die if we do nothing to hold this process back, at least a bit. A festival of people who do not accept the models promoted by mass culture, people searching for the deepest possible sources of inspiration – the inner one. Sensitive and tolerant people who are not afraid to extend their sensitivity.
