Poster from "Pan Tadeusz", photo: Teatr Wybrzeże
Audiences are used to seeing Adam Mickiewicz's Pan Tadeusz as the national epic poem praising the beauty of the homeland in a thirteen-syllable verse. Jarosław Tumidajski takes a different approach, looking beyond the polish to the very core, examining a nation of ceaseless conflict and crisis
The play peels back the surface of Polish patriotism and national identity, encouraging participation in a critical discussion on the nation. The book illustrates an ideal portrait of our countrymen, who not only fight for Poland's independence but who are also engaged in a perpetual fight with one another.
It is said that Mickiewicz created our collective mythology. Even if it is so, it is not unequivocally monumental and over-idealised the way we'd like to see it. He created a place which is doomed in a way by the fact that its inhabitants permanently feel the need to prove to each other who's right. To fight for everything and with everyone, no matter if the cause is a trivial or a fundamental one. It is not the core of the conflict which is the most important, it is the conflict itself.
- Jakub Roszkowski in Wybrzeża, no. 1
The journalist, who also is a dramatist at Wybrzeże Theatre of Gdańsk, sees the Polish nobleman's manor as a beautiful and touching place only on the outside. On the inside it is full of jealousy, egotism and narrow-mindedness. There is no place for Yankiel the Jew or Rykov the Russian. It is place where we, the Poles, feeling perpetually beset by the all the others, attack our countrymen behind closed doors.
Roszkowski finds Mickiewicz's epic as a fitting text for Poland of the past and the present. Poland. He adds, "There's no need for superfluous publicity or recalling everyday news. What Mickiewicz wrote suffices. Unfortunately. Because that means that nothing has changed in the last two hundred years".
Director Jarosław Tumidajski was born in in 1980. He studied at the faculty of Theatre Studies at the Jagiellonian University and graduated from the Theatre Direction department at the Kraków State Drama Academy. He made his debut with Night Bus by Michał Walczak at the Stary Theatre of Kraków in 2005. He has staged such productions as The Laokoon Group based on Tadeusz Różewicz's play at the Wybrzeże Theatre of Gdańsk, Andreas Sauter and Bernhard Studlar's Red Comets at the Solski Theatre of Tarnów in 2007 and Saint Joan of the slaughterhouses by Bertold Brecht at the Witold Gombrowicz Civic Theatre of Gdynia in 2008. Recently he has been working on adaptations of Polish prose and has directed performances based on Michał Witkowski's Barbara Radziwiłł of Jaworzno-Szczakowa (Teatr Śląski of Katowice, 2008), Stanisław Dygat's Disneyland (Ludowy Theatre of Kraków, 2009) as well as Witold Gombrowicz's Transatlantic (Współczesny Theatre of Wrocław, 2008). His most recent production is Juliusz Słowacki's Fantazy/Niepoprawni"/ "Fancies/Incorrigible (Modrzejewska Theatre of Legnica, 2011). See: Jarosław Tumidajski Battles Poland's "Incorrigible Fancies".
Pan Tadeusz, directed by Jarosław Tumidajski, based on the epic poem by Adam Mickiewicz, adaptation, music: Jarosław Tumidajski; stage design, video: Mirek Kaczmarek; the cast: Piotr Chys, Jerzy Gorzko, Emilia Komarnicka, Łukasz Konopka, Michał Kowalski, Jacek Labijak, Krzysztof Matuszewski, Robert Ninkiewicz, Cezary Rybiński, Maciej Szemiel, Marek Tynda, Jarosław Tyrański
Premiere: April 16, 2011, repeat performances: April 17, 19, 20, 2011
Wybrzeże Theatre of Gdańsk
2 Św. Ducha St, 80-834 Gdańsk
Chief Executive and Creative Director: Adam Orzechowski
ph. (+48 58) 301 70 21, 301 18 36
fax (+48 58) 301 20 46
link*www.teatrwybrzeze.pl*http://www.teatrwybrzeze.pl/#/repertuar****Source: press materials