Kamienne niebo zamiast gwiazd - a title which translates as The Sky of Stone Instead of Stars – is a contemporary theatre project which confronts an ever pertinent issue of a past historic event with a radical stage experiment. Garbaczewski and Cecko draw on the Kamienne niebo (The Sky of Stone) novel by Jerzy Krzysztoń, which tells the story of the Uprising from the perspective of hiding civilians, imprisoned in cellars and basements throughout the fighting. The young artists take on this theme in order to construct a world in which isolation, a sense of enclosure and desperate attempts at survival become a universal metaphor, still functioning today.
The Warsaw Uprising was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance Home Army 'Armia Krajowa' to liberate Warsaw from Nazi Germany. The rebellion was timed to coincide with the Soviet Union's Red Army approaching the eastern suburbs of the city and the retreat of German forces. However, the Soviet advance stopped short, enabling the Germans to regroup and demolish the city while defeating the Polish resistance, which fought for 63 days with little outside support. It is an exemple of heroic battle, and a battle that was lost. As it engaged immense numbers of civilians and brought about the nearly complete destruction of the capital, this momentous and tragic battle of Polish history has always given rise to much discussion, debate, and inspired numerous significant works of Polish culture.
Although the exact number of casualties remains unknown, it is estimated that about 16,000 members of the Polish resistance were killed and about 6,000 badly wounded. In addition, between 150,000 and 200,000 Polish civilians died, mostly from mass executions. Jews being harboured by Poles were exposed by German house-to-house clearances and mass evictions of entire neighbourhoods. During the urban combat approximately 25% of Warsaw's buildings were destroyed. Following the surrender of Polish forces, German troops systematically leveled another 35% of the city block by block. Together with earlier damage suffered in the 1939 invasion of Poland and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, over 85% of the city was destroyed by January 1945, when the course of the events in the Eastern Front forced the Germans to abandon the city.
Rather than transporting the audience into a reconstructed historic reality, Garbaczewski and Cecko choose to follow the traces of postmemory. The concept was first used by its author Marienne Hirsch in the early 1990s, when she wrote an article on Art Spiegelman’s Maus iconic comic book about the experience of the Holocaust. On the postmemory.net website, she described the evolving idea in the following words:
“Postmemory” describes the relationship that the “generation after” bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before-to experiences they “remember” only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up. But these experiences were transmitted to them so deeply and affectively as to seem to constitute memories in their own right. Postmemory´s connection to the past is thus actually mediated not by recall but by imaginative investment, projection, and creation.
Garbaczewski and Cecko thus attempt to answer the question, how does the Warsaw Uprising inscribe itself in the memory of the second and the third generation, in what way do these new generations "rewrite the memory" of the Uprising, and, consequently, in what way is it still alive? Their piece also tells the story of a destroyed and reconstructed city, whose putting back together resembles the way one puts together pieces of a broken bone. It is a city whose body still gives out shrapnels and undetonated bombs from the World War II period. On the other hand, it is a city in which young people live, and a place for which they dream of a future better than the past.
Marcin Cecko and Krzysztof Garbaczewski cooperate with artists of the young generation. The cast of the Kamienne niebo zamiast gwiazd is: Justyna Białowąs, Dominika Biernat, Tomasz Bazan, Sebastian Łach, Grażyna Misiorowska, Marta Ojrzyńska, Sebastian Pawlak, Paweł Smagała, Andrzej Szeremeta, Justyna Wasilewska, Krzysztof Zarzecki, Agnieszka Żulewska. The music for this production is created by Julia Marcell.
The piece was a coproduction of the Museum and Warsaw’s Nowy Teatr company.The premiere showing of Stone Skies took place on the 1st of August, at midnight, with subsequent showings scheduled from the 2nd through to the 5th of August, 2013.
• Directed by: Krzysztof Garbaczewski
• Text and stage script: Marcin Cecko
• Video: Robert Mleczko / Marek Kozakiewicz
• Costumes: Svenja Gassen
• Music: Julia Marcell
• Stage Design: Krzysztof Garbaczewski / Jan Strumiłło
• Light: Jacqueline Sobiszewski
• Director’s assistant: Radosław Mirski
• Produced by: Małgorzata Kozioł
Paulina Schlosser, source: www.nowyteatr.org, www.1944.pl, http://www.postmemory.net/, culture.pl, 31.07.2013