Director Katarzyna Minkowska and dramaturg Tomasz Walesiak collaborated with the Polish Theatre in Poznan on The Foreigner, tailored from the 1936 novel by Maria Kuncewiczowa a few classical violinist who provides up her profession to lift her kids. The novel takes place on the ultimate day of the girl’s life. But in an ingenious dramaturgical stroke, the play is ready throughout her funeral, permitting her ghost to attach instantly with the viewers. Alona Szostak’s efficiency created a devastating portrait of an endlessly needy and manipulative lady who, due to her ethnic look and Russian accent, at all times felt like a stranger. To compensate, she smothered her son with affection and compelled her daughter right into a musical profession. Moving seamlessly between her funeral and the previous, the play’s psychology was so wealthy, and the appearing so full, that regardless of the mom’s abusive habits, her kids and the viewers reply with empathy.
First-person narratives
Given the dimensions of most of the exhibits above, it was maybe shocking that the worldwide jury chosen a tiny two-hander for the competition’s high prize. And but, director Anna Karasińska’s Simple Things, created with the Stefan Jaracz Theatre in Olsztyn, gained energy by its participating performances and sincere testimony from two veteran actresses, Milena Gauer and Irena Telesz-Burczyk. The piece consisted of tales and confessions about their careers, artfully advised and brilliantly organized. Without rancor it provided a critique of among the male administrators who thought nothing of asking them to take away their garments or interact in demeaning habits onstage. Ironically the piece ends with one of many actresses bare throughout a priceless improvisation by which a cooked rooster is devoured.
A extra summary theatre-centric manufacturing, additionally in confessional mode, was created by the inventive director of the Łaźnia Nowa Theatre and Director of Divine Comedy, Bartosz Szydłowski. Inspired by Fellini’s 8 ½, Fear and Misery 2022 is framed by audio interviews between the director and his father on his ninetieth birthday, organising questions on success in life. The central motion revolved round a theatre director and three actors trying to create a brand new play by improvisation however always reaching dead-ends. None of their artistic concepts appear to measure as much as the complexity of Polish life at this time. Ironic humor leavens the melancholy battle, together with the periodic arrival of a motley refrain of actors able to act out the subsequent dramatic inspiration. Stunning video and a dense musical rating bolstered the Felliniesque ambiance.
In addition to the timeliness of the work, the dominant takeaway by the American artists in our group was the sense of freedom they skilled on Polish levels.
And on the tiny stage of the Barakah Theatre in Kraków, director Michał Telega’s Angels in America, or Demons in Poland started with a hilarious recital of the corporate’s failed try (by forty-three e-mails) to get the rights to supply Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. Instead, they introduced a sequence of full of life, typically indignant vignettes about on a regular basis homosexual life in Poland, specializing in the battle of popping out in a rustic the place the standing of LGBTQ+ rights is among the many worst in Europe. In a hanging stage coup, a male ballet dancer crossed the stage on pointe, slowly and inexorably, from the start of the ninety-minute piece to the tip.
Why Poland?
As extra American artists discover themselves leaning into political themes, this can be a useful second to be aware of Polish theatre with its lengthy custom of political engagement.
In addition to the timeliness of the work, the dominant takeaway by the American artists in our group was the sense of freedom they skilled on Polish levels. One artist referred to “invisible strings” that appear to regulate us within the United States, together with the monetary want to draw huge audiences and the demand for practical linear narratives. In Poland, against this, they skilled a “feeling of expansion” within the work, with every manufacturing discovering its personal theatrical kind. “In Poland,” one other artist mentioned, “you need to keep your Aristotelian drama muscles in check.” And a 3rd artist noticed that the work appeared to fulfill, firstly, the artists who created it. They puzzled if we within the United States have the fallacious measures of success.