The tour is a part of a huge wave of Polish culture in China, co-organised by Culture.pl and Polish Institute in Beijing. From April 2016, Polish theatre directors will be represented on the most important stages of Tianjin, Beijing and Harbin. Respected figures such as Krystian Lupa, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Grzegorz Jarzyna and Paweł Passini, will present their famed plays, appreciated both in Poland and abroad – productions full of festival-like momentum as well as intimate documentaries.
Among the latter will be The Hideout, described by its director Paweł Passini as ‘a memory lab, a meeting’. It is the story of actress Irena Solska, who hid people fleeing the ghetto from the Nazis during World War II, including the director's aunt, Apolonia Starzec. The director explains:
We tell the story of Poles who became divided from other Poles during the war because they were Jewish. The legacy of this division is still present today. For some reason, in conversation about one's Jewish roots, the word ‘admit’ is used. And our interviewees often said things like ‘I haven’t come out of the closet yet’.
