For thirty years, led by impeccable artistic intuition, the Galeasen Theatre has been selecting pieces that reflect the most profound issues of Polish history with actors and directors who are ready to face challenges. Confronted by unstable cultural politics, the Theatre always expresses solidarity with other independent Stockholm theatre groups. - Dagens Nyheter justifies its choice. This is the eighth time that Dagens Nyheter has given out awards in the cultural field.
The newspapers’ critics select works in the following categories - film, plastic arts, literature, music and theatre - prior to naming one winner in each of these fields. The winners receive a statuette sculpted by Eva Lange.
Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s piece Nasza klasa, translated by Jaremy Bielawskiego and directed by Natalie Ringer, was unrivalled:
This history, based on real events which took place in a Polish town from 1935 until the 21st century, is so rich in experience that it could compete with life, wrote Leif Zern in a review published in Dagens Nyheter.
The première took place on September 20th, 2013. The play, which was originally planned to run for three months, will stay on the Theatre's stage for nine months due to great interest from audiences.
Nasza klasa won the Nike Literary Award (2010) and is currently the most frequently performed Polish theatrical piece worldwide. Following the pre-premiere at the London National Theatre in 2009, the piece was played in Canada, the United States (Philadelphia, Washington, Minnesota, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh), Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, Japan, Brazil, Hungary, Lithuania and Stockholm.
'Nasza klasa' in Tokyo, photo: press materials
The Polish première of the play, directed by Ondrej Spisak (winner of the Feliks Warszawski award in 2011), took place at the Wola Theatre. In 2012, the Budapest version of Nasza klasa won the Theatre Critics Award for the best show of the season in Hungary. In Tokyo, it received the Yomiuri Theatre Award for the best performance in 2013.
Source: press materials, ed. AL, Translated by Konstancja Dunin-Wąsowicz