Piotr Machalica, photo by Robert Jaworski/Och-Theatre
Jan Wołek's songs - about life, interpersonal relations, sources of sorrow, feelings, happiness and tragedy, personal chemistry and love - are to feature in a play directed and performed by Piotr Machalica, as well as Mariana Opana and actors of the Częstochowski theatre: Waldemar Cudzik and Adam Hutyra
Perhaps the most accurate summary of the songwriter's works come from Jan Poprawa:
Wołek represents a whole cosmos of feeling derived from just a single man, he states. He is most possibly today's most accomplished song-poet. Maybe only Jonasz Kofta, in his most beautiful works, manages to soar just as high.
Jan Wołek is a poet, painter and writer. He speaks nonchalantly about his 'art-mastery' and divides his time between Warsaw and Kazimierz Dolny, where he runs a picture gallery. He has never suffered with a lack of passion for his craft, "If it doesn't to come to you, I still take something…and place it close to me", he says. He is the author of songs performed by Hanna Banaszak, Ewa Błaszczyk, Edyta Geppert, Mirosław Czyżykiewicz.
In a magical micro-cosmos of humanly feelings, firmly established are the protagonists: the big boys of the narrative. Twenty verses, miniature masters of poetry, play out to form an unusual tale about man. The world of adolescent boys is bitter-sweet. Linking the pair is a way of looking at the world, a shared sensitivity and a feeling of not fitting-in in life. They meet in order to sing about love, but more often about the lack of it, about loneliness, and about those things which are forever lacking.
The performance is a co-production with the Adam Mickiewicz Theatre in Częstochowa.
- Such Big Boys; written by: Jan Wołek; direction: Piotr Machalica; music: Janusz Grzywacz, Włodzimierz Nahorny, Jerzy Satanowski, Janusz Strobel; arrangement, musical direction: Janusz Bogacki; set design: Arkadiusz Kośmider; starring: Marian Opania, Waldemar Cudzik and Adam Hutyra.
Premiere: January 14, 2011; repeat performances: January 15-18, 2011.
Och-Teatr
Artistic Director: Maria Seweryn
ul. Grójecka 65, Warsaw
tel. (0-22) 823 31 10
tickets: Office Teatru Polonia, ul. Marszałkowska 56, tel. (0 22) 622 21 32
tickets: Office Och-Teatr, ul. Grójecka 65, tel. (0 22) 823 31 10
Source: press release,
www.ochteatr.com.pl