Krystian Lupa
Born in 1943, Polish director Krystian Lupa has spent the past forty years developing a total theatre. After graduating from the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts, he studied at the National Film School in Łódź, then at the Ludwik Solski Academy for the Dramatic Arts in Kraków. He began his career as a director towards the end of the 1970s, before becoming an artist-associate at the Teatr Norwida (1977-1985). He used his time there to defend his love of experimental theatre and to direct plays by Polish authors like Witkiewicz or Gombrowicz. In 1986, he became the director of the Stary Teatr. The playwright, scenographer, and brilliant actor’s director, influenced by Tadeusz Kantor and Carl Jung, has found in literature the inspiration for many shows which have brought him international acclaim and, in 2009, the Europe Theatre Prize. Fascinated by Russian, German, and Austrian authors like Musil, Dostoyevsky, Rilke, Bulgakov, Chekhov, and particularly Bernhard, he has adapted many of the latter's dramatic and literary texts. In The Theatre of Revelation, Krystian Lupa, who likes to work as a scenographer or a costume and light designer as much as as a director, developed his conception of theatre as a tool to explore the spiritual situation of individuals struggling within “times of great cultural upheaval.” He is coming to the Festival d’Avignon for the third time, after Des arbres à abattre in 2015 and Place des héros in 2016.
