9th Divine Comedy International Theatre Festival

Thursday, December 8, 2016 - Saturday, December 17, 2016

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  • Thursday, December 8, 2016 - Saturday, December 17, 2016
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Theatre Utopia

The motto of this year’s Divine Comedy festival is “Poland has not yet perished so long as theatre still lives”! We have a great celebration of Poland’s stages in store!

The theme of the 9th Divine Comedy International Theatre Festival (8-17 December) is a reminder that a country’s position and power aren’t as much about political declarations as they are about independent thoughts and ideas. “We may not be an economic powerhouse, but we remain in the very top rankings of theatres around the globe. I want our motto to defend the people of theatre, give an impulse for the circles to unite and rise up above the debate about the Polish culture which is frequently driven by ideology or reduced to an economic dimension,” says Bartosz Szydłowski, the festival’s artistic director.

Polish hell?

The Polish Inferno Competition features ten of the hottest and most widely discussed premieres of the last season. “The spectacles perfectly reflect the recent heated debate on the role of theatre,” promises Szydłowski. Winners will be selected by an international jury: producer of the Festival/Tokyo Akiko Juman, artistic director of the Holland Festival Ruth Mackenzie, founder of Fundación Teatro a Mil Carmen Romero Quero, the Iranian actress and director Ramona Shah, and the Finnish director Mikko Roiha.

This year’s entrants include brand new names, reflecting the ongoing evolution of Polish theatre and the constant flux of various stage trends. “We will see performances which use different ways to tell us about ourselves, acting as a mirror in which we can see ourselves,” say the organisers. But don’t be fooled by the section name: the idea of a “Polish hell” doesn’t dominate the productions presented during this year’s event. The Stefan Jaracz Theatre in Łódź brings Agnieszka Olsten’s The Histrionic, with the outstanding Agnieszka Kwietniewska as the world-weary megalomaniac artist. Based on a play by Thomas Bernhard, it is a bitter and cynical commentary on the world ruled by falsely-perceived political correctness. Anna Smolar presents the Dybbuk; the contemporary version of S. An-sky’s drama is set in a school, telling a tale of madness intertwined with the struggle of a group of teachers and students to come to terms with a tragic death of a pupil. The director uses the motif of theatre in theatre to reveal the all-too-real phenomena of bullying, exclusion and the stereotypical perception of Jewish culture in Poland. We will examine racism, antisemitism and football hooliganism in Białystok in Piotr Ratajczak’s White Power, Black Memory – a controversial play inspired by Marcin Kącki’s reportage. The Music Theatre in Gdynia presents Agata Duda-Gracz’s notorious Kumernis, Or How Holy Lady Grew a Beard with the outstanding Magdalena Kumorek in the title role. Recalling the legend of Saint Wilgefortis, the monumental musical spectacle (using nothing but human voices!) turns out to be a surprising melodrama set in the austere realities of the Polish countryside.

And of course we will see veterans of the festival. Radosław Rychcik returns to Kraków with the Śląski Theatre’s The Wedding. Continuing his production strategy, the director moves the setting of Stanisław Wyspiański’s drama from a cottage in Bronowice to a pub in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Wiktor Rubin and Jolanta Janiczak invite the audience to take part in the experimental performance We Get What We Believe In, loosely based on Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel Master and Margarita. The artists and the audience sit at a round table, which becomes a space for playing a game between them. Krzysztof Garbaczewski presents a vision of a world ruled by the media in his dark Robert Robur by the TR Warszawa, based on prose by Mirosław Nahacz who died tragically aged just 22.

The Polish competition also features two performances by the National Stary Theatre in Kraków: Jan Klata’s An Enemy of the People on the formation of political conflicts, and Paweł Miśkiewicz’s The Supplicants, based on the play by Elfriede Jelinek examining the refugee crisis in Europe. The winner of last year’s Grand Prix, Michał Borczuch, presents All About My Mother; the Łaźnia Nowa Theatre production is a powerful, personal story of illness, womanhood and death.

Paradise of youth

The temperature of Inferno will be equalled by this year’s Paradiso section, held as a competition for the first time. “One of our ambitions is to find the finest talents,” explains Szydłowski. Young artists will be assessed by a separate jury including directors and curators from Israel, New Zealand and South Korea. The winner receives the sum of 100,000 zlotys towards their next project, which will be presented during next year’s festival. Entrants include Magda Szpecht with Schubert. A Romantic Composition on Twelve Actors and a String Quartet, Katarzyna Kalwat with Holzwege, Małgorzata Warsicka with Dzieje upadków, Anna Karasińska with The Other Show, Aneta Groszyńska with Zapolska Superstar (Or How to Lose in Order to Win), Teo Dumski with Krótki zarys wszystkiego, Jakub Roszkowski with The Wedding, and Jakub Skrzywanek with Zinc-covered Boys.

There will also be a review of theatre schools from all over Poland. We will see graduation works from Kraków’s students: Dogville by Aleksandra Popławska, No Matter How Hard We Tried by Agnieszka Glińska and Marriage by Wiktor Loga-Skarczewski. Weronika Szczawińska from the Wrocław branch of the Ludwik Solski State Drama School in Kraków brings Orlando, Grzegorz Wiśniewski from the Leon Schiller Film School in Łódź presents Maria Stuart, while Marcin Wierzchowski directs Pospolite żywoty martwych Polaków by the students of the Faculty of Puppetry at the Theatre Academy in Białystok.

Home and away

One of the traditions of the Divine Comedy festival is premieres of coproductions as part of the Purgatorio section. This year, the festival worked with Grzegorz Wiśniewski, who presents the Polish premiere of Marius von Mayenburg’s The Plastics at the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre on 8 December. The play is an ironic take on a contemporary middle-class family whose seemingly ordered world is turned upside down by their newly hired cleaning lady. On 9 December, Łaźnia Nowa Theatre presents The Whale The Globe directed by Eva Rysova with Krzysztof Globisz in the starring role. The writer Mateusz Pakuła dedicated his text to this Cracovian artist who recently returned to the stage after suffering a stroke. “It’s a play about empathy, about recovering from an illness, about bringing help,” say the authors.

The programme also features performances from abroad created alongside Polish artists and cultural institutions. The Institute of Memory (TIMe) was prepared to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Tadeusz Kantor with the dramaturgy by Anna R. Burzyńska. Lars Jan’s multimedia project is a performative laboratory of memories, deeply rooted in the director’s family history. We will also see Princess Dramas by the Mladinsko Theatre in Slovenia, directed by Michał Borczuch. Based on a series of plays by Elfriede Jelinek, it is a vivisection of the social and cultural position of “princesses”, both in the mythical and real sense. As well as fairytale characters such as Snow White and the Sleeping Beauty, the protagonists are women who became icons of the 20th century: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Ingeborg Bachmann and Sylvia Plath.

To present the diversity of the local scene, the organisers are also taking us on a journey along Cracovian trail. We will see KTO Theatre’s cult Chorus of Orphans directed by Jerzy Zoń, Pitawal by Anna Rokita from the Bagatela Theatre and Marcin Wierzchowski’s The Secret Life of the Friedmans by the Ludowy Theatre.

***

“The Divine Comedy festival lets us charge our batteries – the atmosphere shows that Poland’s theatre stages never let us be indifferent and help us talk and understand ourselves. We create a space for dialogue, reflection and unity; we make a symbolic gesture of restoring faith in a theatre utopia – in better worlds where people’s Otherness inspires curiosity and is an opportunity for us to improve ourselves,” sums up Szydłowski. All we have to do is immerse ourselves in this utopia!

(Justyna Skalska, "Karnet" magazine)

 

 

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