We are interested in the individual life situations of young people and the political and social circumstances in the countries our guest productions come from. Together we want to embark on world designs in order to transcend them, gain new perspectives on them and question them to the core. What ways do young people find of dealing with the realities of war, destruction and poverty? How do people grow up in the so-called less-developed and least-developed countries? What does it mean to live in a country stricken with financial crisis and mismanagement? How does it feel for young people when a rating agency downgrades the value of their native country? When education and vocational training are no longer guaranteed, when the unemployment rate of people under 30 passes the 50% level?
The festival is intended as a place where life situations can be questioned. The theatre can create spaces as reflections of reality but also utopian counter-designs. Theatre of the present probes categorical boundaries and cultural traditions. It turns process and individual visions into driving forces. The EXPLOSIVE! FESTIVAL's productions are not surrogates for their cultures. They don't represent the traditions and conflicts of their native countries, no matter how much they explore those aspects. They represent solely their own thoughts, viewpoints, stories and histories. As a result, the audience has the opportunity to experience these individual world designs in their beauty, circuitousness and imperfection with all immediacy – complete with the disconcerting and disturbing elements. The EXPLOSIVE! FESTIVAL seeks to explore the changeability of the present and give the ideas and dreams of other world designs a stage. Experiments and processes of theatre are departure from and transcendence of viewpoints, dated theatre traditions and limitations on communication.