On February 19, 2018 the Polish Culture Portal O.pl announced the list of winners of O Awards 2018 for best works in the field of visual art and photography, literature, theater, music, film, architecture and design. One of the winners is the Festival of Set and Costume Design “Stage Under Construction.”
From the Jury’s opinion:
The Theatre Award goes to Ewa Braun, Piotr Franaszek, Leszek Mądzik, Janusz Kapusta, Boris Kudlička, Lech Majewski for the first Festival of Set and Costume Design “Stage Under Construction.
The Festival of Set and Costume Design organized by the Center for the Meeting of Cultures in Lublin is an undisputed novelty in the space of theatre initiatives in Poland. Its creators wanted to stress the importance of work of set and costume designers, as well as to draw the theatre audience’s attention to the fact that the stage and costume design is not secondary to the staging of a play, that it is not something that "decorates" and wraps up acting; rather, that it is an area that has its own language of communicationand can transfer ideas on its own.
The Festival’s programme included an awards competition for best performances of the season to emphasize the craftsmanship in creating innovative space design solutions undertaken by contemporary artists. The Festival's creators receive the O Award for reminding theater lovers of the important role that set and costume design has in conveying the artistic vision of a performance and that the artistic shaping of space can say more than any literary text.
The next edition of O Awards has been begun with the hope that this year’s winners – individual artists, creative collectives and organizers of cultural life – will gain publicity and thereby new opportunities to pursue their intentions. O Awards prioritize attitudes that go beyond the metaphorical "center" and distance themselves from leading strategies and cultural fashions. At the same time, the main criterion in the evaluation of laureates is high artistic and intellectual level of their work.
