POPULATION DENSITY

October 10, 2026

Time: 18:00

Venue: Kana Theatre - out of stock and availability

A stage choral story that gives voice to people who have been marked by disaster, and at the same time touches the anxieties, fears and premonitions of the present, examining the condition of the present world. The four actors, interpreting Svetlana Aleksievich's famous “The Sorcerer's Prayer” in a very personal way, engage in a determined and tender conversation with what is difficult, uncomfortable, touching, what we would like to escape from, and what we would like not to know. He listens attentively to the story of each hero and each viewer, listens to our longings, fears and dreams. Recognizes and tames the unspoken. And dances.

The performance is the winner of the 12th edition of the Teresa Pomodoro International Prize “Teatr Nagi” in Milan in 2021. The acting team consisting of: Bibianna Chimiak, Karolina Sabat, Dariusz Mikuła and Piotr Starzyński, honored with the ARTISTIC AWARD OF THE CITY OF SZCZECIN for significant artistic achievements in 2021. Winner of the Audience Award at the TopoffFestival in Tychy in 2019. Nominated for “Amber Ring” 2017, in the category best performance of the season and best actor/actress for Bibianna Chimiak and Dariusz Mikula.

“Population density. The story of the explosion"based on the “Chernobyl prayer. Chronicles of the Future” Svetlana Aleksijewiczadaptation and direction: Krzysztof PopiołekSet design: Anna WołoszczukCostumes: Piotr PopiołekCast: Bibianna Chimiak, Karolina Sabat, Dariusz Mikuła, Piotr StarzyńskiProduction manager: Piotr Motas, sound, screenings: Piotr Motas & Krzysztof NowakRealization: Teatr Kanapremiera: June 2017Availability: AD, SUBTITLES PL, ENG, DECDuration: 80 minutes

As part of the “Open Theatre in Cannes” project, the performance is available with audio description, subtitles in Polish and translation into German and English. The project is funded by the City of Szczecin.

The performance was realized as part of the scholarship of the Marshal of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship.

The play qualified for the final of the competition for the best performance of independent theater.

More about the idea of the show:

“There are diseases that cannot be cured. You just have to sit and stroke your hands. "” What is left of ancient Greece? Myths of Ancient Greece.” For seventy years we have been building communism, now we are building capitalism. We prayed to Marx, now to the dollar. We are lost in history.”

The heroes of the story Alekseevich are lost in time. Constantly comparing themselves from here and themselves from before, cracked, inaccurately assembled, however, they have the ability to see through. The problem is that this is Orpheus's gaze, a look back (in this case, into the skull, into yourself). Their eyes meet the ruthless gaze of lost time — Medusa, who threatens to return. They fear: that the past has passed irrevocably, that it is no longer recoverable. Their bodies have been cold for a long time, their heads are still drying after dancing on the last day of summer — in the world before the explosion. Once the head sweated on the outside, today it sweats from the inside. And yet - there is a fear that the past may again become the future. These people have become trauma bearers, sensitive to disaster. They are prophets of new dangers.

A man with a negative memory. Paragraph full of questionsHow to hug a sad man? How to absorb the carrier of trauma into the social fabric? How not to bypass his suffering? How not to bypass a man, crushed by the burden of the past? How not to minimize the pain? How to draw a positive conclusion from a negative experience? How not to leave him alone? How not to deny depression? How to be with someone else's grief? How not to plunge into the past? How can I not say: I give up participating in the world? How not to let someone say that? And finally: how not to let go?

Scene as an aquarium

“In the apartments there were aquariums... With fish... And communist posters: The radiation did not harm them."” We left a hamster in the house. Closed. We gave him food for two days.And we left forever.”

I'm staring at the aquarium. In a world reduced to the volume of a tank that I can grasp with a glance, to the few liters of water that are enough to survive. Is that already? So little? Is that enough? I look: aquarium: two verbs: feed and excrete. The movements of the water resemble the movements of the head, the waves of thought that I have flown through to the past. I can't break the glass. And yet there must be something there — further.I dedicate the present moments of my life to the past. I'm wasting those seconds to rebuild something that's been lost. The last line connecting me to the world that was my life after all. Not to be? But how is it? So I might not be here? Just like that: stop? disappear? to let go? Not trying to catch people who — you wish — would still talk to me? So important is not the words, but the melody of the voice. That melody, a calm melody. I'm trying to get direction. I need a reference point. I need someone else's life as a compass — watch out, here's the shoal, don't swim here. Those words stand like buoys, they scream like unclosed graves — be careful, avoid this place from afar, do not fall into this pit. I need other people's stories. Something slipped out of me... My head, the movements of my head, they make trips — I try on other people's skins on myself, I wear someone else's costume for a while, not as an ornament, but as an indication: be careful. Do not lose control of your life. I try on resumes, I say sentences that perhaps would never have happened to me. Which I might never have had to tell you. Sentences that would never have been made without the help of the warm breath that uttered them. Someone else's breath. These words had their warmth. These words already had their breath.I check it warmly to imagine: how many things would never have happened to me. How many words I would never have to say. I put my breaths between those words, I expand my life, I expand with other people's air from those words, there is more of me, I expand the volume of my lungs, my head... It is better that it explodes here — on this black patch, on the stage, in the aquarium — than in my life. I remember the victories and defeats of my grandparents, great-grandparents. Because maybe their drama is still for something else, because maybe there was something else — the world that was.