TADEUSZ RÓŻEWICZ FILE

Tadeusz Różewicz's play opens a new era in Polish theatre, bringing here the achievements of the Western avant-garde of the time — Beckett and Ionesco, and at the same time giving them an unmistakably Polish character, in which the heritage of romanticism is combined with war trauma. Written at the end of the 1950s, it seems still relevant; it has not gone off the Polish scene for several decades. (The author himself returned to it in 1993, apparently finding accuracy in his metaphor.) Its open formula tempts to new interpretations, it submits itself very gratefully to new times, new contents and readings. The scene depicts “the room through which the street passes.” In the middle of the scene is a bed, on it the Hero. Reality flows around him: a great and individual history, memories and current dilemmas, family entanglements and historical challenges, encounters with the living and the dead. It is not known who the Hero really is and what exactly he experienced: he reflects in himself the crises and doubts of each subsequent era, both in its individual and collective dimensions. Today, as well as in the past, we understand his confusion and powerlessness in the face of the current through which the world flows.

The tradition of “Kartoteki” exhibitions is long, it abounds with the most important names of the Polish scene. Among the directors we find Konrad Swinarski, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Krystyna Meissner, Kazimierz Kutz. The role of the Hero was played by Tadeusz Łomnicki, Gustaw Holoubek, Zbigniew Zamachowski. The play was played on stages all over Poland, it was staged several times in the Television Theater and the Polish Radio Theater, and also proved itself in puppet theaters.

In the production, the director intends to ask the question whether it is possible to be a hero today, in “non-heroic times” and what it really means for us, since as a result of the progress of civilization we lose the sense of agency, we become passive, discouraged, overwhelmed. Following the indication of Różewicz himself, who recognized “Kartoteka” as a drama about the contemporary world, evolving with the directors and the audience, the director will consciously saturate his adaptation with elements of today's reality, so that in his performance he will tell about the everyman of the 21st century.

Graduation performance by Maksymilian Nowak.

The performance was co-produced and co-financed by the Helena Modrzejewska Theatre in Legnica and the Theatre Academy in Warsaw from own funds and funds from the Fund for the Start of the Ministry of Culture

The play took part in the 10th Competition for the Staging of Old Works of Polish and European Literature “Living Classics”