Scene from "A Piece on Mother and the Motherland"
courtesy of www.e-teatr.pl
The 4th edition of the festival presents some of the most interesting, controversial and debated Polish performances of recent years on the Big and Chamber stages of the Wybrzeże Theatre in Gdańsk and Sopot. The festival features a premiere performance by the Wybrzeże Theatre
The festival commences in Sopot on June 26th with the performance of Edward Albee's "She-Goat or Who is Sylvia" from Warsaw's Och Theatre, directed by Kasia Adamik and Olga Chajdas. Stevie and Martin, a distinguished architect, are a happily married couple. During a TV interview celebrating his fiftieth birthday, conducted by his friend Ross, Martin confesses to having fallen in love with Sylvia during a stay in the country. Sylvia is a she-goat. The play explores the issue of social taboo and a variety of emotions surrounding it. "Albee provokes the spectator, showing an aberration he doesn't want to judge", says director Kasia Adamik, adding "He exposes the mechanism of betrayal in a seemingly liberal and open family, showing that, as a matter of fact, it is rooted in an unexpectedly deep hypocrisy".
On June 30th the Polski Theatre from Bydgoszcz presents the highly controversial work "Babel", based on a text by Nobel Prize winner, Elfriede Jelinek, directed by Maja Kleczewska.
Babel is an eighty-pages-long text being the author's answer to the Abu Ghraib tortures and savage murder of the workers of the American companies and presentation of their decapitated bodies on the bridge of Fallujah. In the monologues of the human tatters, the Bible and the Antique border on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, while the human need to inflict pain -with the equally strong need to watch the images of suffering, tortured and debased dying bodies.
-Aneta Kyzioł, Polityka weekly
On July 1, theWybrzeże Theatre from Gdańsk presents a premiere performance of Adolf Nowaczyński's "Willkommen in Zoppoty", directed by Adam Orzechowski. Apart from being a part of the festival, the performance is also one of the events celebrating the Polish presidency in the European Union.
The director says of the play:
Willkommen in Zoppoty is an exquisite comedy full of exaggerated, expressive and - at the same time - very funny characters. Bringing together Poles from different annexed territories, American Jews of Białystok origin as well as Austrian and German sirs, Nowaczyński offers us an incredible chance to view, as if through a lense, the everlasting (Polish but also European) complexes, weaknesses, megalomanies and vanities. Nowaczyński managed to create a Sopotian Babel Tower, a multicultural melting pot, which gives an opportunity to muse a while on the European community emerging here and now - on the new Europe.
On July 2nd and 3rd the Polski Theatre from Wrocław presents Bożena Keff's "A Piece on Mother and the Motherland", directed by Jan Klata. The performance is based on an adaptation of a novel by Bożena Keff, a 2009 Nike Literary Prize nominee.
The work of Bożena Keff is an absolute masterpiece. The relationships between a mother and a daughter, a man and a woman, a legislator and a slave are being told through ancient tragedy, oratorio, lament, epic, motherland and sonland of Gombrowicz as well as the pop-culture motifs. (…) Kinga Preis, Anna Ilczuk, Paulina Chapko, Dominika Figurska, Halina Rasiakówna and Wojciech Ziemiański are phenomenal actors, singers and dancers of the Keff/Klata rituals. They're the co-creators of one of the most intelligent, thoughtful and moving performances of the recent years.
-Aneta Kyzioł, Polityka weekly
On July 4th and 5th Warsaw's IMKA Theatre presents Mikołaj Grabowski's "Description of Customs III" based on the texts of Father Jędrzej Kitowicz and Henryk Rzewuski.
This is the third time director Mikołaj Grabowski reaches for the works of Father Kitowicz, finding in his works the never-ending source of truths about the Polish nation.
Of his fascination with Kitowicz's works Grabowski writes in the programme to the performance:
It's not only a history lesson, but an attempt at a lesson of wisdom as well, since the nation is strong when it's self-conscious and does not solely concentrate on extolling its virtues.
Rzeczypospolita daily's critic Jan Bończa-Szabłowski sees the performance as an example of "an intelligent game with the spectator. An absorbing treatise on the national defects and absurdities of ours; on our exaggerated fantasy and unfulfilled hopes. A highly ironical comparison of the way the Poles would like to be seen and actually are seen".
On July 7th and 8th the TR Warszawa theatre group presents Grzegorz Jarzyna's "T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T", which is a scenic adaptation of Pier Paolo Passolini's 1968 film "Teorema". A mysterious guest appears in the house of a Milanese manufacturer, Paolo, announced by an enigmatic telegram "I shall be coming tomorrow". And so he does come, changing the life of the Italian family once and for all. The show's characters are presented at a critical point of their lives, where, as in a Karl Jasper's theory, one has to either turn away from life or strive to achieve a higher level of consciousness to overcome limitations placed upon them by society or their own psychological inhibitions. Transcendation of these limitations and the resulting personal freedom are the key to an individual's experience of an authentic existence. "T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T" - the result of Jarzyna's laboratorial work with the actors - is a theatrical palimpsest: a model, a formula or a theorem of his existential path.
On July 9th and 10th Ludwik Solski State Drama School presents "Babel 2", a diploma performance directed by Maja Kleczewska.
In "Babel 2" Kleczewska uses the untapped shreds of Elfriede Jelinek's work to build a séance of false confessions of the eleven actors. In a room full of screens and pop-culture rubbish shame and voracity, addictions and phobias are whirling together. A girl monologues caressing her mouth with a kitchen knife, another one devours raw meat during a fit of bulimia. We're seeing the physiology of pregnancy and the misery of motherhood. The director opens up each of the young actors radically; teaches them how to play both the form and "the guts" at the same time. (…) I remembered the times when Lupa and Jarocki made the conventional acting faculty diplomas real theatre events".
- Łukasz Drewniak, Przekrój weekly
DETAILED FESTIVAL PROGRAMME
June 26 at 20:00, Chamber Stage
Edward Albee
THE SHE-GOAT or WHO IS SYLVIA?
Direction: Kasia Adamik and Olga Chajdas
The performance produced by the Och Teatr from Warsaw.
The cast: Maria Seweryn (Stevie), Radosław Jamroż (Billy), Piotr Machalica (Martin), Bartłomiej Topa (Ross).
June 30 at 19:00, Big Stage
Elfriede Jelinek
BABEL - a performance recommended for adult viewers
Direction: Maja Kleczewska
The performance produced by the Polski Theatre from Bydgoszcz.
The cast: Karolina Adamczyk, Dominika Biernat, Marta Nieradkiewicz, Małgorzata Witkowska, Michał Czachor, Michał Jarmicki, Artur Krajewski, Sebastian Pawlak (guest appearance) and Marcel Zygmunt as the Angel.
July 1 at 19:00, Chamber Stage
Adolf Nowaczyński
WILLKOMMEN IN ZOPPOTY - premiere
Direction: Adam Orzechowski
The performance produced by the Wybrzeże Theatre from Gdańsk.
The cast: Piotr Chys, Ewa Jendrzejewska, Katarzyna Kaźmierczak, Łukasz Konopka, Mirosław Krawczyk, Maria Mielnikow-Krawczyk, Wanda Neumann, Marzena Nieczuja-Urbańska, Robert Ninkiewicz, Andrzej Nowiński, Małgorzata Oracz, Zbigniew Olszewski, Maciej Szemiel, Jarosław Tyrański and Piotr Biedroń, this year's graduate of Kraków's Ludwik Solski State Drama school making his debut on the Wybrzeże Theatre stage.
July 2 - 3 at 19:00, Big Stage
Bożena Keff
A PIECE ON MOTHER AND THE MOTHERLAND
Direction, music and text arrangements: Jan Klata
Performance produced by the Polski Theatre from Wrocław.
The cast: Paulina Chapko, Dominika Figurska, Anna Ilczuk, Kinga Preis, Halina Rasiakówna, Wojciech Ziemiański.
July 4 - 5 at 21:30, The Chamber Stage
based on the texts by Father Jędrzej Kitowicz, Henryk Rzewuski and the foreigners visiting Poland at the time of reign of King Stanisław August.
I CAME TO WIDAWA AT MIDNIGHT - OR THE DESCRIPTION OF CUSTOMS III
Script, direction, stage design: Mikołaj Grabowski
Performance produced by the IMKA Theatre from Warsaw.
he cast: Iwona Bielska, Mikołaj Grabowski, Andrzej Konopka, Wojciech Błach, Oskar Hamerski, Olga Mysłowska, Magdalena Boczarska, Tomasz Karolak, Urszula Popiel.
July 7 - 8 at 19:00, Big Stage
Based on the work of Pier Paolo Passolini
T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T.
Direction and script: Grzegorz Jarzyna
Performance produced by the TR WARSZAWA.
The cast: Jan Englert (Paolo), Danuta Stenka (Lucia), Katarzyna Warnke (Odetta), Jan Dravnel (Pietro), Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieślak (Emilia), Sebastian Pawlak (gość), Rafał Maćkowiak (Angiolino) as well as Barbara Janczewska, Zbigniew Moskal, Andrzej Papis and the extras: Mieszko Barglik, Paweł Gromek, Piotr Gromek, Michał Mikołajczak, Kamil Przystał, Tomasz Trojanowski and the children.
July 9 - 10 at 19:00, Chamber Stage
Based on BABEL by Elfriede Jelinek
BABEL 2
Direction: Maja Kleczewska
A diploma performance of the 4th year Acting Faculty students of the Ludwik Solski State Drama School of Kraków.
The cast: Maria Dejmek, Marcin Kowalczyk, Maciej Nawrocki, Dawid Ogrodnik, Lidia Olszak, Hubert Podgórski, Patrycja Pulit, Piotr Stramowski, Daniel Szczypa, Krystian Wojtarowicz, Joanna Woźnicka.
-----
A meeting with the team behind the performance THE SHE-GOAT OR WHO IS SYLVIA on June 26 at 22:00 in the foyer of Chamber Stage.
A meeting with the team behind the performance BABEL
on June 30 at 22:15 in the foyer of Big Stage.
A meeting with the team behind the performance A PIECE ON MOTHER AND THE MOTHERLAND on July 2 at 20:45 in the Big Stage.
A meeting with the team behind the performance I CAME TO WIDAWA AT MIDNIGHT –OR THE DESCRIPTION OF CUSTOMS III on July 4 at 23:30 in the Chamber Stage.
A meeting with the team behind the performance T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T. on July 7 at 21:30 in the Big Stage.
A meeting with the team behind the performance BABEL 2 on July 9 at 21:10 in the foyer of the Chamber Stage.
Wybrzeże Theatre of Gdańsk
2 Św. Ducha St, 80-834 Gdańsk (Big Stage)
30 Bohaterów Monte Cassino, 81-767 Sopot (Chamber Stage)
Chief Executive and Creative Director: Adam Orzechowski
ph. (+48 58) 301 70 21, 301 18 36
fax (+48 58) 301 20 46
Ticket sale and reservation:
Gdańsk, Targ Węglowy, ph. 58 301 13 28
Sopot, Monte Cassino St, ph. 58 551 50 40
bilety@teatrwybrzeze.pl
www.teatrwybrzeze.pl
Source: www.teatrwybrzeze.pl, www.trojmiasto.pl, www.e-teatr.pl