The New World Order Idiom was the sixth edition of Malta Festival Poznań focused around a theme. After presenting performative arts from Latin America and Belgium, after the idiom on exclusion, man-machine and European and Asian relations, Malta proposed a theme combining global and individual perspectives on the modern world.
Our invitation to prepare this year’s program was accepted by Tim Etchells, one of the most important artists of the European theatre, director, writer and author of visual projects, the founder of the collective Forced Entertainment which has been performing since 1984. The programme included eleven interdisciplinary projects of artists such as Tiago Rodrigues / Mundo Perfeito, Vlatka Horvat, Winter Family, Rabih Mroué, Pieter De Buysser, Schwalbe, Deborah Pearson [go to the portrait gallery and read the message left by the artists]. Many of them raised the issue of what does it mean to tell a story in theatre, what new narrative forms work with media discourse and can exist in the area between a play, an installation or a performative lecture.
The presence of Forced Entertainment was particularly strong during the festival. Apart from the play Tomorrow's Parties, which discussed the topic of the shape of the world in the futurein a subversive manner, the Malta audience also had the chance to see The Notebook, which was premiered last year (Malta Festival Poznań is one of the co-producers of the play) and the new Tim Etchells neon light, ordered specifically for the Malta idiom, entitledNever Sleep and installed over the entrance to Stara Rzeźnia in Poznań. Thanks to Malta we also had the opportunity to read the first book by Tim Etchells published on the Polish market, which is about the creative body of work of Forced Entertainment. Tim Etchells also held his masterclass, which was attended by young people of theatre from all over the world.