The performance is a response to Lars von Trier’s The Idiots (1998) about a group of young people who, by pretending to be mentally disabled, ridicule western social standards. G.E.N is not an attempt to criticise the socio-political system, but rather to reflect on the human nature because, despite civilizational and evolutionary progress, humans do not develop morally. It is a journey across circles of global systems, social and partner relations, through individual psyche, in search for the elementary particle in charge of violence and hatred.
The 360 video recording of the play is the first production of its kind that allows to watch the performance from the middle of the stage. Thanks to the collaboration between the first punk theatre in Poland and the VR production studio, the edition of the original recording has been upgraded with the use of special effects and animation to create a unique theatre and movie experience for each individual spectator.
The premiere of G.E.N VR will be held at the massxmass Future Center, dedicated to innovative technologies for creative industries, during several VR Cinema shows for 20 viewers.
Director: Grzegorz Jarzyna
Production: Adam Mickiewicz Institute, TR Warszawa, Mimo.ooo
More information about the project: http://trwarszawa.pl/projekty/wydarzenie/n/gen-vr/
Screenings of archival TR Warszawa performances followed by discussions with theatre critic Roman Pawłowski and director Grzegorz Jarzyna.
No Matter How Hard We Tried
13th February 2018, Yokohama
A film adaptation of the play by Dorota Masłowska directed by Grzegorz Jarzyna on the stage of TR Warszawa in 2009, where it enjoyed huge success. The acclaimed film adaptation from 2015 is an avant-garde, hybrid form merging the languages of the theatre, film and animation.
In transposing Dorota Masłowska’s play to the screen, Grzegorz Jarzyna tells about post-transformation Poland. No Matter How Hard We Tried is a humorous tale about the empty forms that make up the modern social fabric: about language, politics and the theatre of cultural roles.
No Matter How Hard We Tried is a story about Polish society during the time of the transformation that is full of grotesque dialogues consisting of twisted quotes from pop culture; mockery of the language used in commercials, magazines, and tabloids; and national stereotypes. The heroines are three women from three different generations living below the poverty line in a cramped bachelor’s apartment in Warsaw: a gloomy old woman in a wheelchair; her daughter, Halina; and her granddaughter, a little head banger. The panorama of characters is filled out by their neighbors.
I confronted generations: languages, ways of thinking and functioning, different every day realities in order to bring out the discord, the non-existence of someone who could be described as ‘the statistical Pole’, the lack of a platform on which all this could meet and could be described by the word ‘we’. Everything in the play is rather gruesome and exaggerated, but it seems to me that for the first time I actually say something potentially good. I certainly do not express a direct positive message, but this is my first text in which I did not write: ‘Oh, what an awful country we live in, how drab!’. On the contrary, this is my affirmation of being a Pole and Polishness, which is at present totally sneered at, has mud slung at it and is treated, at least in my generation, as a flaw, as a slap in the face from fate.
- Dorota Masłowska
The screening will be followed by a discussion with director Grzegorz Jarzyna and film critic Roman Pawłowski about the audiovisual form for the theatre representations based on examples of Jarzyna’s performances including the 360 captation of his G.E.N that has its premiere at TPAM Fringe.
Director: Grzegorz Jarzyna
Author of the play: Dorota Masłowska
Production: TR Warszawa and the National Audiovisual Institute
The film was co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
More information about the project:: http://trwarszawa.pl/spektakle/miedzy-nami-dobrze-jest/
Tropical Craze
15th February 2018, Yokohama
Tropical Craze by Grzegorz Jarzyna premiered in 1997 on a small Warsaw stage Teatr Rozmaitości. The premiere of the performance was a milestone in the history of Polish contemporary theatre. A year after the critically acclaimed debut, Grzegorz Jarzyna was offered the position of the director of the stage and company, which he has later transformed it into TR Warszawa, one of the most important theatres in Poland and one of the best known Polish theatres in the world.
After the premiere of this revolutionary performance at the Polski Theatre, Krystian Lupa wrote in Didaskalia Magazine:
Concurrently, we reached the end of the 20th century with a feeling of strangeness of existence and narcotic escape into fiction and the fact went almost unnoticed.
TPAM2018 will feature the video recording of the performance from the TV Theatre archives, followed by a discussion about the marking points for the contemporary Polish theatre with Roman Pawłowski, theatre critic and programme director of TR Warszawa, and Grzegorz Jarzyna, TR Warszawa’s artistic director.
Director: Grzegorz Horst D'Albertis (Grzegorz Jarzyna)
Author of the play: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz
More infrmation about the project: http://trwarszawa.pl/projekty/wydarzenie/n/tropical-crazy-screening/
The presentation of TR Warszawa at TPAM2018 will be accompanied by industry meetings and presentations in Osaka (Knowledge Capital) and at the Kyoto University, introducing Polish theatre to the representatives of the Japanese creative industries a year before the celebration of the Polish-Japanese Cooperation Year.
TR Warszawa
TR Warszawa, one of the most important and internationally recognised Polish theatre companies. Since 1998 directed by Grzegorz Jarzyna who transformed a small stage in the heart of Warsaw into a true centre of artistic experiments of all kinds. Over the years Jarzyna has created a theatre that not only provides a space for his own work, but also attracts key Polish and international theatre directors such as Krystian Lupa, René Pollesch, or Kornél Mundruczó. Always on the lookout for the new talent and a new language for contemporary theatre, TR Warszawa initiate international collaborations, commission new works, and propose bold reinterpretations of classics texts. The theatre opens its own stage to up and coming actors and directors, but it also encourage them to explore the creative potential of non-traditional performance spaces in the city.
The project is carried out in cooperation with the Adam Mickeiwicz Institute operating under the Cultre.pl brand.
Source: TR Warszawa's press materials, edited by AW, 5 Feb 2018