Plays
Tourists
Julia Holewińska
Morbid satire on travel and the tourist industry inspired, inter alia, by Conrad and Coetzee. The Demonic Guide takes blasé rich people, representatives of the world of art, fashion and politics, for an expedition to the "heart of darkness". The chosen ones go through subsequent infernal spheres of erotic tourism, gastronomic tourism, "necro-tourism", and "human zoo", from which they come back changed. Julia Holewińska exposes the cynicism and arrogance of developed countries in confrontation with the Third World, but she also exposes myths, illusions and hopes that we like to associate with distant expeditions.
Mr Schuster Buys a Street (Herr Schuster kauft eine Straße)
Ulrike Syha
A family meeting at the Monopoly game turns into a discussion about modern economics and the abandonment of idealism. The protagonists of the play are former 1968 rebels and their children: from discussions about the rules of a popular board game, becoming a metaphor for social relations, there emerges a picture of today’s middle class of Western Europe, feeling remorse caused by the memory of youthful manifestoes for a better world, and at the same time flirting with consumerism.
The Raspberry Empire (Das Himbeerreich)
Andres Veiel
The play by a German director and screenwriter talks about the growing position of banks and supranational corporations, powerful enough to cause their decisions or problems affect the economies of entire countries. Veiel, presenting the mechanisms of speculating against the value of companies, and the role of banks in the global monetary system, reveals systemic diseases, still uncured despite numerous debates resulting from recent crises in the world economy.
Essays, Studies
What do we look at, when we look at Asia?
Urszula Jabłońska
At the beginning there are always folders advertising travel agencies and airlines that are there to help us move to the exotic world. It is from them that photos of white deserted beaches with one solitary coconut palm, to which a hammock is attached with a colourful umbrella drink next to it, emerge. Somewhere in the background there is an exotic dancer with a red flower behind her ear. However, if we decide to make an independent journey, we may come across completely different views.
Goga
Jolanta Kowalska
The acting legend can be a testimony of time. In the wardrobe stories, the image of theatrical life is consolidated, and the cult of its stars often reveals the taste and longing of the audience itself. Idols are an expression of the world that has created them, is the embodiment of its dreams, a collective dream. What did Wrocław dream about, creating and nurturing the myth of Igor Przegrodzki?
Through toys, for toys and about toys
Anna Jazgarska
Looking at the main character of Wojciech Kościelniak's theatrical staging of The Tin Drum, one can get an irresistible impression that we see - for the first time in the entire work of the director - a personalized, bodily representation of the force which sets the entire stage reality. In the performance by the Wrocław Capitol Theatre Oscar Matzerath, the narrator and main character of Tin Drum by Günter Grass, has the shape of a puppet attached to the actor’s body.
The lives of Agata Kucińska
Magdalena Piekarska
With the same ease with which Oskar Mazerath strikes the rhythm with the chopsticks, playing this character in the Tin Drum, Agata Kucińska combines the workshop of a puppeteer with an acting, dramatic talent into one. The effect takes the breath away. And the dilemma – puppets or drama – loses its raison d'être. Because the sum of these two experiences gives a dazzling effect.
Between wars: Barszczewska and Eichlerówna
Ewa Hevelke
None of them looked timeless. One of them had something of a heifer, the other of a cat. With her big eyes, surrounded by bright hair tangles, calmness, forbearance, naivety and goodness emanated from the characters created by Elżbieta Barszczewska. Irena Eichlerówna's gaze was never calm. The features of her face expressed, at least, determination. In any case, it was a passionate face – erotic and militant at the same time.
To embrace the whole world
Monika Wąsik
The way Ulrike Syha understands and experiences theatre is somewhat vampiric. When asked about why she writes plays, she answers that she considers theatre to be the most vivid, still in need of people, but also using them, medium. One could suspect – following the author's biography – that this kind of self-destructiveness by theatre has become a part of her life as well.
Independence of smaller events
Katarzyna Niedurny
The first step to organize theatrical celebrations of the holiday were legislative activities and the establishment of a government programme aimed at subsidizing the celebrations of Independence events. It is interesting to look at how the centenary of Poland’s independence was celebrated in Polish public theatres.
A notch on the banner. On the margin of two Independence exhibitions in Warsaw, and one book
Ewa Toniak
About the exhibitions Signs of Freedom. About the Endurance of the Polish National Identity at the Royal Castle and Niepodległe: Women, Independence and National Discourse at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, which seemingly differ from each other, but can also be treated as the obverse and reverse of the narrative about the independence of Poland.
Columns
Marek Beylin, Tadeusz Nyczek, Piotr Morawski, Pedro Pereira
Varia
Contexts: Zofia Cielątkowska on landraces politics on the margin of Jumana Manna’s film A Small/Big Thing; Notes on plays: Jakob Nolte No future forever; Laura Naumann Das hässliche Universum; Jeton Neziraj Hipokritët ose pacienti anglez; Playbill