With its new visionary production, Teatr Biuro Podróży takes audiences all around our planet on a journey of the imagination
The world tour of "Planet Lem" launches on the very first day of the Polish Presidency, with the London showing on July 1, 2011. This first stop is part of the annual Watch This Space Festival. Some of the other festival contexts for upcoming performances will be the Berlin Lacht! Festival, GogolFest Festival in Kiev and the 798 Art Distric Festival - Beijing Fringe.
Co-produced by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, "Planet Lem"showings are scheduled in Brussels, Paris, London, Berlin, Madrid, Moscow, Kiev, Minsk, Beijing and Tokyo, in cooperation with local partners, Polish Institutes and Embassies of Poland. The performance is an original text written by Teatr Biuro Podróży, inspired by the prose of Stanisław Lem's, his unique, witty and poignant diagnosis of the contemporary world, and his reflection on the relations between technological progress and limitations of the human race.
The characters featuring in the performance are familiar to readers of Lem's novels and short stores: Ijon Tichy, Professor Tarantoga, humans, supercomputers, robots. The play presents a story which was never written by Stanisław Lem, yet is rather the troupe's own impressions based on the author's writings. "Planet Lem" is a future land which has become a false paradise, a kind of dystopia. In a futuristic civilization, artificial intelligence ensures an illusory state of well-being for humans. Degenerated Mucillids - humans of the future - are idle and passive, and the meaning of their existence is reduced to the intake of hallucinogen doses. Ijon Tchy, our contemporary, sets out to meet them thanks to time travel technology.
In the words of Paweł Szkotak, the director of "Planet Lem":
Lem's genius lies not only in the fact that he was actually able to predict precise technological advancements. He also had the perspicuity to forsee their impact, the way they will affect and change man. Our descendant will not only look different, but also have completely different family and social bonds. Technological advancement is capable of both answering and creating needs. At the same time, it introduces virtually unlimited possibilities for control and manipulation.
What will be the outcome of Ijon Tichy's cosmic time-travel, and his encounter with the future human form? Many apt reflections are brought on by his confrontation with the future civilization. Is there a line to be drawn between helping and imposing one's vision of truth and good? Can Tichy destroy the idyllic facade in the name of truth and awareness? Is happiness one with freedom? And, most importantly - how will the intervention of a man from the past in the world of the future end?
The performance employs a spectacular mobile set design, special light effects and multimedia projections. Music composed especially for the performance by Krzysztof Nowikow unites a symphonic resonance with postindustrial sounds. And a surprising conclusion can be drawn from this fantasy: a longing for the sacred and mysterious, breath-taking imagery and the dream of a better world all amount to making science-fiction one of the few possible reserves of common romantic ideas.
Planet Lem
Directed by: Paweł Szkotak
Script based on Stanisław Lem's prose: Teatr Biuro Podrozy
Set design: Agnieszka Zawadowska
Music: Krzysztof Nowikow
Produced by: Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Teatr Biuro Podrozy