Dutch director Johan Simons' "The Asylum Seeker," which opened the Warsaw International Theater Meetings Festival, features a lucid scene wherein the hero, Beck, having progressively stripped himself of all illusions, announces his function to the world: "I exist to fuck sick whores! That is my function!" Beck has apparently come to terms with this eminent distinction in the hierarchy of the natural order, just like, one would venture to say, Polish theater and the surrounding atmosphere of criticism, has come to terms with fucking sick whores rather than attempting to gain new mistresses of a better variety. If anything, Beck has the upper hand on Polish theater, because at least he has no illusions about his role in life.

It is impossible to watch the Asylum Seeker without thinking back to the numerous instances of "controversy" that have surrounded Polish theater, particularly within the context of the struggle of traditional versus "new" theater in Poland. Warlikowski's Wozzeck was deemed "controversial" because the hero wore underwear, Suka Off's "Clone Factory" was labelled pornographic because of mild nudity - the list could go on. Yet in each of these instances, the elements which were cast as "shockingly groundbreaking" only reveal the radical thickness of the ground that apparently needs to be broken in Polish theater when compared to 'The Asylum seeker.' It would be an understatement to say that certain scenes from 'The Asylum Seeker' are controversial by Polish standards. They simply explode Polish standards by being so mild in their execution of the lurid. It is one thing to do something "shocking" knowing full well that it will shock people, it is quite another to do it as if one were but