The audiences and critics in France have been fascinated by the operatic and theatrical imagination of Krzysztof Warlikowski for years. Numerous favorable reviews echoed in the French press in 2012, following the stagings of African Tales After Shakespeare, with journalists calling it a catharctic and disturbing experience. Warlikowski’s previous production of Streetcar Named Desire, featuring Isabelle Huppert and hosted by the oldest Parisian theatre - Theatre de l’Odeon - also echoed with heated, albeit mixed reactions in the French papers. Apart from these two recent productions, theatre goers living in France have also had the chance to see the Polish director’s take on Dybuk, a play based on the texts by Hanna Krall, the opera Medee, and the play called (A)pollonia, which was presented at the Festival d’Avignon in 2009.
Warlikowski returns to France in May 2013, performing once again the festival in Avignon, where he will stage a play entitled Cabaret. Drawing inspiration from Bob Fosse’s 1972 film of the same title, the piece portrays New York as a city buzzing with music and intertwines this portrayal with the unsettling atmosphere of the Weimar Republic, where the fascists gradually rise to power. The piece is a co-production between Warlikowski’s Nowy Teatr in Warsaw and the Festival d’Avignon.
The official award ceremony takes place on Monday, the 18th of March, 2013 at the Residency of the French Ambassador to Poland, Mr. Pierre Buhler. The Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres is presented to Krzysztof Warlikowski by His Excellency the French Ambassador.
Krzysztof Warlikowski was born on the 26th of May, 1962 in Szczecin. He studied history, philosophy and Roman languages at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He took up history and theatre studies at the Sorbonne’s Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris in 1984. Warlikowski moved back to Poland in 1989, where he started his studies at the Direction Department of the Ludwik Solski National Higher Theatre School in Kraków (Państwowej Wyższej Szkole Teatralnej im. Ludwika Solskiego). One of his mentors was the renowned director Krystian Lupa, who had a huge influence on the young Warlikowski. Throughout his studies, he worked as an assistant to Lupa and also assisted the plays directed by Jean-Pierre Garnier and Peter Brook. Warlikowski was invited to Budapest in 1993, where he participated in workshops for young theatre directors of the Union of European Theatres. That same year, his graduation play entitled Markiza O. (Marquisse O.), based on the piece by Heinrich von Kleist, was staged at the Stary Teatr in Kraków, one of Poland’s venerable and major stages.
Following his graduation, Warlikowski directed in theatres in Poland, in Kraków, Poznań, Toruń, Radom and Warsaw, and abroad, in Hamburg, Tel Aviv, Milan and Stuttgart. The director began to cooperate with the Teatr Rozmaitości in Warsaw, now known as TR Warszawa, in 1999. He staged seven performances there, and all were successful in Poland and abroad at international festivals. Warlikowski also directed companies in Zagreb, Bonn, Nice, Amsterdam, Hannover and Paris.
He first directed an opera in 2000, at the Teatr Wielki in Warsaw. Since then, he has directed opera productions on Europe’s major stages. Since 2008, Krzysztof Warlikowski is the artistic director of the Nowy Teatr in Warsaw.
Source: PAP, edited by Anna Legierska
Translated by Paulina Schlosser