Scene from "Kabaret Warszawski". Pictured: Bartosz Gelner., photo: Magda Hueckel / Nowy Teatr
Krzysztof Warlikowski's Kabaret Warszawski will premiere at the Open'er Festival this summer. The production then plays at the Avignon Theater Festival and at Le Théâtre de la Place in Liège, Belgium. It will premiere in Warsaw in September.
"For me, the most important thing is the moment of confrontation with the audience" Warlikowski acknowledges in an interview in the magazine Przekrój. The acclaimed director will see if his Kabaret Warszawski will inflame several thousand spectators at one of Europe's important arts festivals.
Following his widely acclaimed revival of Angels in America at Open’er 2012, Warlikowski and his actors, including Stanisława Celińska, Maja Ostaszewska, Magdalena Cielecka, Magdalena Popławska, Maciej Stuhr, Andrzej Chyra and Jacek Poniedziałek – return to the festival in Gdynia this year. They will transport the audience to two separate realities – “Berlin” and “New York” – both of which can be seen in the theatre tent.
Will the show billed as the most important event of the season repeat last year’s success? Reviewers think so. According to Jacek Wakar, Warlikowski’s Kabaret represents a new level of his career, and goes against expectations. He suggests that the director has breathed new life into this theatre piece. Of the performance, Wakar writes:
Warlikowski deliberately narrows his perspective, mirroring the ruin of the city in his characters. He focuses on their sexuality, showing it to be beyond simple classification. Jacek Poniedziałek presides over the action as Justin Vivian Bond, a transsexual singer, actor, and writer. What might come off as overly obvious significance is redeemed by Warlikowski’s sense of humor. Maja Ostaszewska, playing a psychotherapist and sex therapist who has never experienced an orgasm, embodied a role in which one can easily see references to Warlikowski’s earlier creations. This time, however, he has placed a sort of ironic parenthesis around the neuroses which were earlier at the centre of his work..
It is the first show that will play on a permanent basis at the headquarters of the Nowy Teatr in Warsaw. The production thus provides the director with the opportunity to define the character of his theatre.
Nirvana and the March of the Rising Sun
Between concerts of world music stars, the public will also be able to hear and see another production, Courtney Love. This theatrical interpretation from the renowned duo of Monika Strzępka and Paweł Demirski (with the Teatr Polski in Wrocław) connects the spectacular career of Nirvana with the realities of Polish show business in the 1990s. Courtney Love – who accompanied Nirvana on its road to success and at the same time is accused of bringing about the collapse of the group – becomes a figure who embodies the negative effects of capitalist reality, in which the worker is treated as either commodity or client. The text is accompanied by songs of Nirvana and Love's band Hole, performed by actors from the Teatr Polski.
Rafał Świątek, director of the award-winning Paw Królowej by Dorota Masłowska at the Stary Teatr in Kraków, transports festival viewers from the campsite to the tennis courts. The production’s set design evokes the atmosphere of television scenes or a recording studio. The stage becomes a type of laboratory, in which viewers observe the actions of actors enclosed in a cage. From the first moment, Masłowska’s language – delivered at machine-gun speed – attacks the audience. This linguistic assault is both funny and frightening as is reveals the emptiness of the characters.
The theatrical program at Open’er closes with Nancy. Wywiad, directed by Claude Bardouila from the Nowy Teatr in Warsaw, with Magdalena Popławska in the lead role.
This year’s festival is also exhibits contemporary art. With a special, outdoor gallery of artworks, Paweł Althamer, joined by the group Nowolipie and all willing participants of the festival, will march towards the rising sun. Artists showing their work this year in Gdynia include Anna Poniewierski, Jakub Pieczarkowski, Jarosław Ewert, Kamil Sobczyk, Edyta Jermacz and the group Lasem.
Source: Przekrój, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, opener.pl, edited by AL
Translation: Alena Aniskiewicz 06/06/2013