Plays
Sienkiewicz Superstar
Jan Czapliński
A bitter and funny historical fantasy, happening in parallel in 1905, 1916 and now. Henryk Sienkiewicz prepares a speech to be delivered before the Nobel Committee. At the same time preparations are being made for the centenary of Poland’s regaining independence and the President announces the "national reading" of the writer's works. On the one hand, we see the complexes and limitations of a man who has surpassed his own fame, and on the other - the escalation of national hysteria, fuelled by his adventure novels and their legendary screenings.
Love affairs of Saint Michel the Archangel
Krzysztof Kopka
A comedy in the convention of Sarmatian dramas, inspired by the Baroque opera and one of the novellas of the Decameron. The protagonist is the Prince Bogusław Radziwiłł, who goes crazy with boredom like a spoilt child. A plan of breaking the Sejm session is being created to cover his evil actions. To this end, guests come to the castle. Their visit also brings love, but Amor's arrow hits not where we initially think. The author deals with the present, with history and Polish myths, and does not spare the characters of Sienkiewicz's novel.
Nach uns das All oder Das innere Team kennt keine Paus
Sibylle Berg
The play presents a disastrous vision of the future, in which people demonstrate against democracy on the streets, demanding ever more radical governments primarily aimed against all minorities - not only migrants and homosexuals, but even vegetarians. Those who do not want to live in a xenophobic and full of hatred world must save themselves by escaping. The road to a better world is far away and leads all the way to Mars - this is where the attempt at finding a new, better society, capable of living wisely and in peace is to be made. Thanks to the reality show, daredevils will be chosen (a woman and a man). In 2025 they will be transported by a rocket to Mars and start their mission.
Essays, Studies
Reccomendation
Magdalena Raszewska, Magda Hueckel, Dobrochna Ratajczakowa, Tomasz Rodowicz, Jakub Krofta, Maria Wojtyszko
Explain why Dorota Buchwald should hold the office of the director of the Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute in Warsaw.
Hidden in his own shadow
Ryszard Koziołek
Sienkiewicz was not an idiot in the original Greek meaning of the word: “idiôtes”, meaning a man occupied only with his private business, absent from the public sphere and uninterested in politics. Nevertheless, he desired this state and when he lacked creativity as a tribute to politics, he gave it the last decade of his life.
Smile engineering
Jolanta Kowalska
The rhetorical space of Jan Czapliński's scenarios is never completely “ready”, nor are there any statements that can be considered as final. This is thanks to a double-edged “smile engineering” which effectively blocks the message from the position of authority. The spectators, invited to co-think, do not receive any instructions - they must make their own choices. In such a dynamic, polyphonic and far from simple polarization space the audience's subjectivity is likely to materialize.
Duels of the Century
Kornelia Sobczak
One could look at the cyclical show of TVP Kultura Duels of the Century as an attempt to create a nationwide pantheon on the French-Republican pattern. But in the Polish case, it is rather a junk room. This is because no identity project results from this show, no new quality is created, no synthesis, but more importantly, no element of doubt is introduced.
Tales of the intelligentsia’s madness
Sebastian Smoliński
On the occasion of the publication of the biography of Edward Żebrowski by Jakub Socha Żebrowski. Hipnotyzer {Żebrowski. Hypnotist} and the selection of unrealized scenarios written jointly with Michał Komar and Herbert Distel entitled Film Stories, it is worth returning not only to just a few of Żebrowski's films, but, above all, to rethink the tradition of the “Tor” Film Group with which he was associated for many years.
Irony begins at home
Michał Komar, Joanna Krakowska, Wojciech Marczewski
A conversation centered around the unrealized scenarios by Edward Żebrowski and the tradition of the "Tor" Film Group.
Autonomies of art and immaterial work
Ida Ślęzak
In the era of late capitalism, immaterial and cognitive work, in the face of new ways of thinking about defining human subjectivity in relation to it, also technological, environment, we must rethink what art can be. Not because the only way for art to survive is to collaborate with the capital - on the contrary, one should look for new ways to build autonomy, not beyond or on the outskirts of the market, but perhaps in its very centre, revealing the logic and ubiquity of biopower. Marta Ziółek's proposal is very bold. In circumstances that seem radically unfavourable for the creation of an autonomous artistic expression, she managed ironically and casually to make a comment about which it is hard to decide whether it is a criticism or only a description of the existing situation.
Columns
Marek Beylin, Tadeusz Nyczek, Piotr Morawski, Pedro Pereira
Varia
Contexts: Olga Byrska on whether poetry can save the world on the margin of Lisa Allardice’s Carol Ann Duffy: “With the evil twins of Trump and Brexit... There was no way of not writing about that, it is just in the air” (“The Guardian” of 27 October 2018).
Notes On Plays: Tyrfingur Tyrfingsson Bláskjár; Bernhard Studlar Nacht ohne Sterne; Przemysław Pilarski Horror szał.
Playbill.