In December 2016 Szpech took part in a debate organised by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, alongside with four other Polish young female directors (Anna Karasińska, Katarzyna Kalwat, Anna Smolar, and Weronika Szczawińska) which took place in Paris. Asked about this event and the presence of women in theatre, Szpech told Paweł Soszyński in an interview for Dwutygodnik:
If there's ‘femininity’, it operates on a different level and manifests itself during the rehearsals rather than in the performance as such. […] I'd say we all do very much to dismantle the hierarchy in theatre. When you start directing as a young woman, you feel the weight of the theatrical structure upon you and the institutional system ceases to be transparent. […] We’re also not interested in coercing actors into doing something.
Szpecht presented her staging of Hamlet in 2018 in Andersen Theatre in Lublin. It was titled <hmlt> and was based on two texts – the Shakespearean original and Hmlt by Łukasz Wojtysko, who was also responsible for dramaturgy. Zuza Golińska was responsible for set design and costumes. Szpecht was inspired by an experiment conducted by British scientists. They gave an android called Homer16 the greatest works of literature to read, so that the machine could learn humanity from them. Szpecht described the android's reaction to Hamlet:
Homer16 said that Hamlet was a story of an indecisive prince and his crazy girlfriend that teaches us that enemies should be eliminated, because otherwise you will be eliminated by them. Well, in fact I think it's quite a reasonable summary of Hamlet.
The artists decided to test how AI's reading of Hamlet would work on stage, asking viewers to assume the machine's point of view for a while.
Rzeczy, Których Nie Wyrzuciłem (Things I Did Not Throw Out, trans. NS) is an award-winning non-fiction book by Marcin Wicha. Magda Szpecht decided to prepare its staging, once again in co-operation with dramaturge Łukasz Wojtysko, in Fredra Theatre in Gniezno. It was titled Rzeczy, Których Nie Wyrzuciliśmy (Things We Did Not Throw Out). The characters in the performance, just like Wicha in his book, talk about their late parents through objects – describing their relationship to things. Alongside three professional actors, three students of Uniwersytet Trzeciegio Wieku in Gniezno performed.
Together with the group TERAZ POLIŻ Szpecht prepared the performance The Cunning Stunts. Its starting point was a survey that the artists published on a Facebook page, encouraging women to anonymously share their erotic fantasies. Aleksandra Hirszfeld was responsible for dramaturgy. There were three performers: Dorota Glac and Kamila Worobiej from the group TERAZ POLIŻ and Jaśmina Polak from Nowy Theatre. As a description of the survey created by the artists reads:
Fantasies are democratic – they know no age, no ability and no boundaries. Sometimes they may be confrontations with our own selves, sometimes they are surprising and impossible to fulfil – they don’t have to be realistic, as they're a guidepost. […] In a positive relationship they become a tool for understanding, sexual stimulation, building tension and intimacy. They are infinite in their variety.
The performance was presented in Nowy Theatre in Warsaw in May 2019.
Sources: press materials, TR Warszawa, Dramatic Theatre in Wałbrzych, dwutygodnik.com.
Written by: AL. Translated by: MW, January 2018, update NS, November 2019.