Paul Bargetto (born 1969, San Jose, United States) is an international theater director, dramaturg, festival producer, teacher, and arts activist based in Warsaw, Poland. He is the President and Founder of Fundacja Teatru Trans-Atlantyk, an NGO dedicated to producing live and digital arts through two initiatives: Teatr Trans-Atlantyk, a documentary theater ensemble, and Eldorado Teatr, a digital live arts platform. Bargetto also collaborates on projects outside of these organizations, particularly in the field of dance, and his work has been presented across Europe including Poland, Germany, Romania, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, France, Turkey, Lithuania, as well as numerous productions in the United States.

Before moving to Europe, Bargetto lived and worked in New York City, where he founded the theater company East River Commedia (1998-2010). Important productions with East River Commedia include Striptease and Out at Sea, Philosopher Fox and Serenade, The Magnificent Cuckold, and A Couple of Poor, Polish-Speaking Romanians. He also founded and directed the undergroundzero festival (2007-2014), a festival of experimental independent live arts presented in six incarnations at various venues throughout the East Village and Lower East Side, including PS 122, Collective:Unconscious, Clemente Soto Velez, and the Living Theatre. In 2005, Bargetto helped found the League of Independent Theater, an advocacy organization for independent theater in New York City, where he served on the board of directors and as the managing director of public affairs for five years.  

Bargetto’s artistic practice demonstrates a commitment to engaging with diverse communities. He has developed projects that specifically address LGBTQ+ representation, exploring queer themes and identities in theater and advocating for diversity and inclusion. Since the beginning of the full scale invasion of Ukraine, he has concentrated on working with Ukrainian theater and dance, as well as numerous humanitarian initiatives. He also creates work that addresses the history and culture of Jewish communities, with a specific focus on the Holocaust and its impact on contemporary society. He is a member of Kultur Liga, a network of Jewish artists in Poland.

Recent directing and dramaturg credits include Album Karla Hockera and California with Teatr Trans-Atlantyk, Plateau, Fabula Rasa, and i, on the Verge of Humanity with choreographer Maciej Kuzminski, and Historie Mowione, a site-specific performative installation in Poznan. Other projects include Alphabet Cities, a multi-year project of arts and advocacy for the LGBTQ community in Poland, and International Agency for Ukraine!, a performative installation with Ukrainian and Polish artists as part of the The_____Dream Festival with the House of Beautiful Business in Sintra, Portugal.Bargetto is currently touring Every Minute Motherland, a documentary dance piece with Ukrainian and Polish dancers with choreographer Maciej Kuzminski about the war in Ukraine. He is currently working on two new pieces: Cantos, a dance theater performance with Maciej Kuzminski based on the follies of Francisco Goya in Wiesbaden, Germany and “If I had a Gun, I’d take them all down,” a play by Ukrainian playwright Piotr Armionowski in collaboration with actor Michael Rubenfeld.

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Artist Statement

Paul Bargetto (°1969, San Jose, United States) creates performances, photos and conceptual artworks. By contesting the division between the realm of memory and the realm of experience, Bargetto wants to amplify the astonishment of the spectator by creating compositions or settings that generate tranquil poetic images that leave traces and balances on the edge of recognition and alienation.

His collected, altered and own performances are being confronted as aesthetically resilient, thematically interrelated material for memory and projection. The possible seems true and the truth exists, but it has many faces, as Hanna Arendt cites from Franz Kafka. By applying a poetic and often metaphorical language, he finds that movement reveals an inherent awkwardness, a humor that echoes our own vulnerabilities. The artist also considers movement as a metaphor for the ever-seeking man who experiences a continuous loss.

His works appear as dreamlike images in which fiction and reality meet, well-known tropes merge, meanings shift, past and present fuse. Time and memory always play a key role. By questioning the concept of movement, he absorbs the tradition of remembrance art into daily practice. This personal follow-up and revival of a past tradition is important as an act of meditation.

His works isolate the movements of humans and/or objects. By doing so, new sequences are created which reveal an inseparable relationship between motion and sound. Paul Bargetto currently lives and works in Warszawa.