Single woman

A performance inspired by the script of a film by Agnieszka Holland and Maciej Karpiński.

Recognized as one of the most important performances of the last seasons, “The Lonely Woman” directed by Anna Smolar won the most important theater awards of the 2024/2025 season. It is a contemporary interpretation of the story of Irena — a single mother fighting for a dignified life for herself and her child.

Creators combine theatre, music and movement to create a moving story of loneliness, exclusion and the need for care. With the participation of Ryfa Ri, the performance acquires an additional dimension, raising the question of who would be the heroine of the film Agnieszka Holland in contemporary Poland.

Filmed in 1981, the picture is the story of a single mother, Irene, struggling to keep herself and her son Bogus afloat. In a supposedly socialist state, during the Solidarity Carnival, a “backless” woman is unable to make ends meet. He plunges into illusions, goes to more and more desperate steps. Today, this film evokes ambivalent feelings: it is irritating, “inflated”, grossly inferior... blatantly up-to-date?

Who would Irena AD 2025 be? In the fourth decade after the political transformation, in the era of digital capitalism and the privatization of public services, she is no longer a “single” but a “self-sufficient” mother. A person who is instilled that he can only have a grudge against himself.

In her consciousness there is an uninterrupted feed of well-wishers, ready to support her with good advice, charity fundraising, coaching in the management of time and money. And above all, the constant concern for Bogus, for whom it is not enough to provide clothes and a roof over his head - it is necessary to give him space to safely express emotions and develop interests. Because what would he say in therapy he can't afford?

Trapped in the ruthless architecture of social imaginations, in the exhausting choreography of a survival game, cloaked in the sweet ooze of charitable compassion, Irena falls into a spiral of desperation, resentment, powerless projections. Where can they lead her in a world that supposedly celebrates “female power” and demands revolutionary change?

And where is God in all this?