The seventeenth Between.Pomiędzy Festival takes place from 11 to 17 May 2026 at various locations in Tricity🌊 The interdisciplinary festival is a space where literature and theatre meet. As the name suggests, the festival is also bilingual, and the programme includes numerous events in English. Performances, poetry readings, discussions, workshops, and other exciting events are planned in the course of the week. The guests include major poets, theatre-makers, theatre-practitioners, and researchers in theatre, performance, and literature from Poland and abroad. Join us at various venues in Gdańsk and Sopot! 💙
Highlights of the festival include poetry readings by Paula Meehan, the acclaimed Irish poet who is the festival’s special guest, and a performance of Memling: The Story of the End of the World by the outstanding Polish theatre director Agata Duda-Gracz🎭 This highly visual and physically intense production by Teatr Wybrzeże will be presented for the first time with English subtitles produced by translation students from the University of Gdańsk. This makes the performance accessible to a wider international audience. The festival also highlights manifold connections between Polish and international theatre.
The festival begins with The University of Gdańsk Samuel Beckett Seminar: Echo. During the first part, scholars from Poland, Hungary, and Brazil will present their recent research work📚 The second panel, Neurocognitive Beckett, is co-organised with the Department of Neuroscience Imaging and Clinical Sciences of the Università degli Studi “G. d’Annunzio” di Chieti-Pescara in Italy. It includes a keynote address by Professor S.E. Gontarski (USA), a special address from Clara Simpson (Ireland), and is chaired by Angelo Romagnoli (Italy). On the same day, the official festival opening takes place in the Main Library of the University of Gdańsk.
Other events include: theatre performances; exhibitions; workshops/laboratories with Annabel Arden – a co-founder of the ground-breaking London-based theatre company Complicité; and round table discussions that explore various aspects and echoes of European identity🌍 All this will be complemented by presentations of the final products of workshops conducted by Clara Simpson, and of laboratories curated by Roman Pawłowski. These and other projects show the work of students of Arts Management, English Philology, Cultural Communication, and other departments at the University of Gdańsk🤓
Another significant part of the programme is literary exchange. This is co-organised with Dom Literatury w Gdańsku📖 Festival participants will have an opportunity to engage with topics such as Translating Polish poetry into Scots presented by David Malcolm, and to learn about the poetry project Baltic Correspondences curated by Anika Spindelmann and Monika Szuba🖋️
The Between.Pomiędzy Festival is designed not only as a platform for academic exchange but also as a space for artistic collaboration and dialogue across cultures👥 Those mentioned above are only a few examples of the rich programme of events on offer. Between.Pomiędzy is supported by the University of Gdańsk, the Pomeranian Voivodeship, and the Irish Embassy in Poland.
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Event Venue
University of Gdańsk, Profesor Marii Janion, Gdańsk, Polska, University of Gdańsk, BOTO Theatre in Sopot, Wybrzeże Theatre in Gdańsk, Gdańsk House of Literature , Gdansk, Poland
