At the final stage, director Andrey Novik combined the created stage sketches into a single performance. The final show took place as part of the festival programme and was presented to festival participants, theatre critics, guests and residents of Lublin.
The leaders of the student groups who organised the trip to the festival also took an active part in the workshop.
Directors Alexandr Marchenko, Valentina Moroz, Andrey Novik, actors Maria Petrovich and Maxim Shishko led workshops, conducted stage readings, took part in the laboratory performances and led morning discussions of what they had seen the day before. This involvement allowed all participants to feel like equal creators and created an atmosphere of theatrical celebration.
The workshop also included a presentation of the bachelor’s programme “Theatre Arts and Acting” by the programme director, Associate Professor Alexandr Marchenko, and EHU students.
The trip to the BLISKI WSCHÓD festival was a special experience for every participant. According to our students, the workshop in Lublin was an opportunity to go beyond the usual educational format and really focus on their work. The intensive rhythm of the four-day workshop, from morning to evening, required the students to be fully engaged: morning lectures set the direction for the day, and the ideas that arose were almost immediately tested in rehearsals and performances. Many noted that it was precisely this speed and openness of the process that rekindled their interest in the profession and allowed them to be bolder in trying new forms, making mistakes and searching for their own theatrical language.
Joint discussions and the exchange of experiences were particularly valuable. The different perspectives and theatrical approaches of participants from different countries helped them to formulate their own positions more precisely, including in conversations about identity, migration and the role of art today. For some, an important discovery was the opportunity to show unfinished material in an open format and receive feedback without fear or internal resistance. The laboratory was remembered as an intense working space where, in a short time, ideas and initial sketches of future statements emerged — not for the sake of the final result, but for the sake of the search process itself.
