25 x XXI | 25 Years of Iconic Polish Performances: Solidarity. The Reconstruction / Solidarity. A New Project
The production sought to reclaim 'Solidarity' for contemporary political projects, liberating it from its mythic profile as the heroic slayer of communism, the guarantor of neoliberal reforms in 1989, and, in later years, the custodian of a conservative order rooted in the church porch.
Over the last quarter-century, the political engagement of Polish theatre has evolved and assumed various iconoclastic, provocative, and revisionist forms – critical of the present or revisionist towards the past. Theatre has been inscribed into a broad and flexible notion of the political, even though it rarely declared itself political in direct terms. Nor did it often articulate its engagement as explicitly and literally as Paweł Wodziński and the company of the Polish Theatre in Bydgoszcz in Solidarity. The Reconstruction, which premiered on 23rd June 2017. The production brought together numerous political threads embedded in the most current Polish, global, and local contexts, employing the tools of documentary theatre and drawing on extensive archival research. The production took the shape of a historical reconstruction – a reenactment of the First Congress 'of NSZZ ‘Solidarity', whose two sessions took place in Gdańsk in the early autumn of 1981.
The performance was created using transcripts, documents, audio and video recordings, interviews with participants of the Congress, and a wealth of contextual materials. Its dramaturgical premise was to present Solidarity as a horizontal movement shaped by its numerous participants, and to excavate the still-usable political potential of the union's systemic demands – crucially, while entirely disregarding its habitual conservative-nationalist-Catholic entourage. In this sense, the production was from the beginning a political project aimed – according to the performance programme – against 'discredited neoliberal capitalism on the one hand, and nationalism and isolationism […] on the other'. Its ambitious objective was to reflect on 'a new, democratic and egalitarian political project that […] would propose a just world'. For all its lofty rhetoric, the production neither offered easy analogies nor naïve prescriptions; nor did it idealise Solidarity. Rather, it foregrounded the movement’s inherent tensions and contradictions.
The scenography reconstructed, on the basis of archival photographs, the layout of the plenary hall in Gdańsk's Olivia arena, complete with an elevated presidium table and seating sectors corresponding to the original arrangement of delegates. The audience thus became part of the performative space; between the rows of chairs stood microphones for the actors speaking as delegates. Crucial elements of this environment included screens and monitors displaying archival footage from the Congress, live camera feeds from the stage, recordings of recent global demonstrations and protests, as well as song lyrics. Musical instruments placed along one side of the stage were played by members of the cast.
The performance unfolded in three parts. The first reconstructed the speeches of representatives of foreign trade unions who attended the 1981 Congress, situating Solidarity's history within broader global crises, social transformations, and struggles that were not simply 'fights against communism', but battles for workers' rights against all forms of authority. This section was accompanied by British punk songs and union anthems from the 1980s, as well as visual materials from protests around the world.
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'Solidarity. The Reconstruction', dir. Paweł Wodziński / photo: Monika Stolarska / Teatr Polski w Bydgoszczy
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The second part focused on the debate surrounding the programme resolution on workers' self-management, particularly the question of how enterprise directors should be selected. Because this issue was a flashpoint in negotiations with the communist authorities, who refused to relinquish their prerogatives, the discussion revealed an internal conflict within Solidarity – showing the radicalism of some factions and the conciliation of others, as well as the tensions and the first significant crisis of democracy inside the union.
The reconstruction drew freely on the Congress transcript, synthesising selected threads and juxtaposing the actors' statements with live transmissions and archival materials, producing multilayered reinterpretations – sometimes mockumentary, ironic, or even comic. A deliberately subversive choice, given the minimal presence of women at the Congress and their near-total absence in the union's leadership, was to cast actresses in the roles of male activists and experts, including Martyna Peszko's bravura reconstruction of an interview with Andrzej Celiński.
The content and form of Solidarity. Reconstruction critiqued not so much the union's history as the prevailing historical narratives that sidestepped the progressive, self-government-oriented, civic agency character of the programme adopted at the Congress. The production reclaimed Solidarity for contemporary political projects, freeing it from its mythologised image as communist slayer, guarantor of the 1989 neoliberal turn, and later a conservative church-aligned gatekeeper. Reviving the idea of a Self-Governing Republic was also an implicit critique of Poland' post-1989 transformation and institutional order, situating the production within a decade-long revisionist trend in Polish theatre and within broader global critiques of capitalism articulated in theatre and performance art.
The production also referred, directly and indirectly, to the situation of the Polish Theatre ensemble in Bydgoszcz. Yet it avoided reactive or interventionist messaging, and certainly any elegiac tone; instead, it aimed for constructive, programmatic reflection. Solidarity. Reconstruction happened to be the farewell premiere of Paweł Wodziński and Bartosz Frąckowiak's artistic directorship – an emblematic conclusion to the consistently left-wing programme they had pursued for three years. As the city authorities declined to renew their contracts, part of the ensemble chose to leave alongside the artistic team.
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'Solidarity. The Reconstruction', dir. Paweł Wodziński / photo: Monika Stolarska / Teatr Polski w Bydgoszczy
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These circumstances shaped the final, third section of the performance: a projected recording of the ensemble's discussion about self-management, autonomy, and independence in theatre; the feasibility of democratic practices in cultural institutions; and the possibility of forming a cooperative or association that would allow the group to continue their work outside institutional constraints. Jakub Ulewicz referenced the Congress's resolutions: 'Culture and education cannot be used to impose uniform convictions or to shape attitudes of submission and passivity. So, how far are we, how unrealised the demands of forty years ago remain, and how relevant is the question: should we burn down the committees or build our own? And how do we do that? And where do we get the money for it? And how do we feel safe together?'.
After leaving the Polski Theatre in Bydgoszcz, Wodziński created a second version of the performance. On 29th October 2017, Solidarity. A New Project premiered at TR Warszawa in the ATM Hall, produced by the same creative team and most of the cast. The first two parts were only slightly altered; the third featured new footage recorded on 3rd October 2017 during a march marking the anniversary of the Black Protest. Actors embedded in the crowd recited the Congress delegates' statements. The resonance of thirty-six-year-old demands voiced in the midst of a contemporary street protest was striking: independence of the judiciary, environmental protection, opposition to exploitative resource extraction, calls for educational reform, minority rights, the socialisation of culture, and the position of women in the labour market. The performers, voicing Solidarity's programme during a real demonstration, not only revealed the programme's ongoing political relevance but also themselves crossed consciously from theatrical practice into activism.
In both versions, the production – rooted in political disillusionment, created against a vision of a future without alternatives, and reconstructing a political programme from fragments of a Solidarity utopia – demonstrated how difficult and thankless democratic practice can be, and how powerful, and at times rationalised, the temptations to bend or ignore its rules remain. Wodziński and the Bydgoszcz ensemble offered neither a sentimental vision of the past nor naïve proposals for the future, but a reconstruction – or a new project – of solidarity, with a lowercase s.
Written by Joanna Krakowska
A researcher at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences and a lecturer at the Theatre Academy in Warsaw, she specialises in the history of contemporary theatre. She is the author of ‘PRL: Przedstawienia’ (PRL: Performances, 2016) and ‘Demokracja: Przedstawienia’ (Democracy: Performances, 2019), two volumes on the history of public theatre in Poland, as well as ‘Odmieńcza rewolucja: Performans na cudzej ziemi’ (A Queer Revolution: Performance in a Foreign Land, 2020), winner of the Gdynia Literary Prize.
The Hieronim Konieczka Polish Theatre in Bydgoszcz
Solidarity. Reconstruction
Directed and designed by Paweł Wodziński
Written by Piotr Grzymisławski
Music by Karol Nepelski
Video by Magda Mosiewicz
Lighting by Michał Głaszczka
Premiere: 23rd June 2017
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Scena Prezentacje / Biennale Warsaw
Solidarity. A New Project
Directed and designed by Paweł Wodziński
Written by Piotr Grzymisławski
Music by Karol Nepelski
Video by Magda Mosiewicz
Multimedia by Łukasz Jara
Lighting by Michał Głaszczka
Premiere 29th October 2017