"Plant Lem" by Tourist Office Theatre
The staging of Stanisłąw Lem's prose by Teatr Biuro Podróży (The Travel Bureau Theatre) has created a penetrating and comic diagnosis of contemporary living. It provides for apt reflection on the relations between the development of new technology and the decline of the human species
The show is directed by Paweł Szkotak and depicts a future world, in which artificial intelligence keeps the human race in check with a vision of illusory affluence, leading to her subsequent degeneration and listless passivity.
The production was made possible through Teatr Biuro Podróży's partnership with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. The collaboration comes as part of a cultural programme commemorating the Polish presidency in the European Council in 2011. It will be shown in Brussels, Paris, London, Berlin, Madrid, Moscow, Kiev, Minsk, Pekin and Tokyo, in co-operation with the Polish Institutes and Polish embassies of those cities as well as local partners.
The protagonists of Planet Lem are figures known from stories and tales written by Stanislaw Lem, including Ijon Tichy, professor Tarantoga, the Lepniak community, supercomputer and robots. The world is inhabited by humanoid figures, whose sense of living is regulated by hallucinogenic substances. Under the watchful eye of the cyber-carriers, they live out their days with the illusion of peace and well-being.
They give civilization anesthesia, because if not they would hate themselves, writes Stanislaw Lem in The Futurological Congress. That is why you should not wake civilization up from its dream…it maintains an equilibrium which, without me, would tumble to ruin into universal agony. I am the last Atlas of this world.
What will the cosmic journey through time bring Ijona Tich and his meeting with the Lepniak peoples, the forms of future man? Will, in the name of truth and knowledge, Tichy have the right to break through their false ideal? How will this newcomer influence their future?
The performance makes use of spectacular movable set design, lighting effects and multimedia projections. The music has been composed especially for this project by Krzysztof Nowik and uses symphonic sounds representing the post-industrialist world. The show is neither xenophobic nor politically incorrect.
- Planet Lem; screenplay based on the prose of Stanisław Lem; Travel Bureau Theatre; direction: Paweł Szkotak; set design: Agnieszka Zawadowska; music: Krzysztof Nowikow; production: Tourist Office Theatre, Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw; pre-premiere showing (for the inauguration of the Mask Theatre Festival): December 2, 2010.
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