Statement of the Festival Jury for the Festival of Joy 2025
The festival jury would like to thank all creators and organizers for the wonderful atmosphere throughout the entire festival.
We appreciate that the festival offered a diverse program – bringing together young and adult audiences, professional artists, and students of theatre schools in sharing a colourful mix of various theatre genres and creative approaches.
Over the course of a week, we saw nearly twenty performances from across Europe – from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Italy, Slovenia, and Slovakia. We witnessed spectacles ranging from purely puppetry-based pieces to entirely dramatic ones. We experienced a wealth of inspiring theatrical ideas in the magnificent and enchanting world of theatrical illusion.
Illusion – transience – dreaming was the theme of this year’s Festival of Joy. We value how artists from all over Europe approached illusion in their own way – always uniquely, and above all sincerely, entertainingly, and engagingly. They allowed us and the other spectators to peek into their laboratory of theatrical illusions. At times we longed to stand on stage with them; at other times we marvelled at how they achieved what we saw. Sometimes the creators, within the play itself, deliberately tore down the imaginary curtain of illusion and invited us into their world, into their soul. And we were truly grateful for it.
The festival thus became a platform for exploring illusion. It allowed us to discover how illusion (not only the theatrical kind) works, what its functions are, and how it can be used. On one hand, we received valuable insight through the expert commentary of master Barry Purves during his workshop; on the other, we were able to verify our observations directly within the festival’s rich program.
A special treat for us was the literary competition, which introduced young emerging authors and made four of them very happy during Thursday’s award ceremony. We are curious to see whether any of the texts will someday appear on the stage of the Radost Theatre. We certainly harbour no illusions about the fact that it would be well worth it.
We are simply overjoyed with the entire festival. May that joy continue!
Awarded Productions
- Special Award for the production UNTOLD for creating a fresh audiovisual work
- Special Award for Marcin Ryl-Krystianowski for his strong identification with the puppet Fox in the production Aby tě husa kopla!
- Special Award for the creators of the production Faust for creating a small-yet-grand form
- The international jury of the 3rd Festival of Joy unanimously decided to present two Grand Prix awards this year, both for the dialogue between traditional and contemporary theatrical language – to the productions Son and The War of the Worlds.
