The Dramatic Miniatures Marathon was the culmination of a process that began several months earlier in the residency space of Villa Decius. Rather than merely summarizing the creative work, the event opened it up to further circulation on stage and in the public sphere. Four short theatrical forms presented at the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre in Kraków demonstrated how sustained work with new dramatic texts can lead to a genuine encounter with audiences.
The starting point was the screenwriting residencies held at Villa Decius as part of the Forum for Dialogue of Cultures programme: Residencies for Screenwriters and Playwrights. The programme brought together playwrights and writers from Poland, Germany, Turkey, and Ukraine. Four dramatic miniatures were created by Ewa Bembenek, Jäckie Rydz, Fâtıma Çalışkan, and Lena Lagunszkowa—formally and linguistically diverse works united by a shared need to reflect on contemporary reality.
The texts were then entrusted to young directors—students of the Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Kraków and the Academy of Dramatic Art in Białystok—who, working with full interpretative freedom, developed four original stage productions. The directors were Lada Borovska, Kamila Kucia, Julia Lange, and Piotr Sędkowski.
On the stage of the Machine House, writers, directors, actors, and audiences came together without intermediaries. For the playwrights, it was an opportunity to confront their texts with a live audience; for the creative teams, it offered a chance to work with new dramatic material not yet established within the theatrical circuit.
The Dramatic Miniatures Marathon confirmed the importance of long-term, process-based initiatives developed by the Villa Decius Institute of Culture and the Villa Decius Association, in which each stage leads naturally to the next. This collaborative model—grounded in reinterpretation and the expansion of artistic visibility—demonstrates that a living culture requires open, international, and dialogical spaces that extend beyond the framework of a single event or a single evening.
Photos: Paweł Mazur
