Maat Project Theatre was founded by Tomasz Bazana and a group of his artist friends in 2004. In the course of its 10 years of existence, it has transformed from a student theatre into a leading Polish dance and performance company, producing in the process over 20 dramatic plays, butoh shows, dance pieces, collective installations and performances. Tomasz Bazan’s creations have been showed all over Poland and abroad, e.g. in Germany, France, Spain, UK, Belgium, USA, Belarus, Ukraine, Italy and Slovakia. Lang (Bazan’s solo created as part of the Solo Project at Stary Browar, Poznań, 2008), Wake up, and Station de Corps were showcased at successive editions of the Polish Dance Platform among other top Polish dance productions in 2008, 2010, and 2012.
Tomasz Bazan has collaborated with a string of top theatre houses and established art centres, including Krzysztof Warlikowski’s Nowy Theatre, Dramatyczny Theatre (Warsaw), Powszechny Theatre (Warsaw), Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera (Warsaw), Praga Theatre (Warsaw), Nowy Theatre (Łódź),
Art Station Foundation by Grażyna Kulczyk (Stary Browar, Poznań), Gardzienice Theatrical Centre, Kunst Gillian Gallery Berlin, and many more. Among the artists who have collaborated with Bazan and make up Maat Project Theatre’s constellation are: Jacek Poniedziałek, Małgorzata Szczęśniak, Renate Jett, Janusz Opryński, Krzysztof Garbaczewski, Radosław Rychcik, Łukasz Barczyk, Marcin Liber, Szczepan Orłowski, Marcin Cecko, Anita Wach, Anna Steller, Natalia Kalita, Mikołaj Mikołajczyk, Piotr Trojan, Patrycja Płanik, Justyna Wasilewska, Golo Kohl.
In 2009 Maat Project Theatre’s members and friends turned their need to showcase the body, experiment with its forms, and focus on the process into reality, launching the Maat Festival. Over its five editions so far, the festival has gathered 56 artists showing their existing works or preparing them especially for the event. In 2013 Maat Festival changed its formula: instead of annual showcases it became an all-year-long artistic residency platform allowing artists to focus of the creative process, not the effect, in line with the original idea of Maat Festival’s founders, who wanted the project to be a space for freedom where artists can concentrate on the process, not the outcome.
The home of Maat Project Theatre and Maat Festival is Lublin’s Culture Centre, containing a dance studio, offices and a permanent stage. Their operate all over Poland and across Europe, driven by their primary need to be free.
