Mireczek

Is it the Polish normal, to watch a parent get drunk, smash his paw against the wall, jerk, scream, challenge? We hide in the corners and remain silent. DDA is a conspiracy of silence. Why do we prefer to be anonymous? Why is public talk about childhood a “drag”? Because no one else will understand us? Because we're going to offend someone? This story is not unique — many people carry it inside of them.

What is alcohol sickness? When does a close person become a stranger? How do you end up on the margins of society? Is it possible to be born evil? Saving your own father or, above all, yourself? Speaking of DDA syndrome, telling the story from the perspective of the victim, not the perpetrator, it is impossible not to mention yet: about the rescuer syndrome, the stages of alcohol dependence, the struggle with trauma, the end of relationships and grief after the loss.

The play is an adaptation of the reportage “Mireczek. A Tale of My Father” by Aleksandra Zbroi.

The play quotes excerpts from animated films produced by Walt Disney Productions: “101 Dalmatians”, “Beauty and the Beast”, “Dumbo”, “Galloping Gaucho”, “Peter Pan”, “Pluto and His Family”, “Sleeping Beauty”, “Aristocrats” and excerpts from the book “Letter to Father”, selection and elaboration of George Wójcik, Grzegorz Piechota, Agora Publishing House, Warsaw 2008.

Excerpt from Anna Sańczuk's interview with director Krzysztof Popiołek

The most important figure for me was my absent father. I didn't imagine that he might not appear, but I was looking for a clever way to make that disappearance into a metaphor, how to take that father in parentheses. I figured that this is the internalized voice of the daughter, and the whole situation is happening at the funeral of the father. Out of the coffin comes a therapist who asks how you feel right now? The therapist softly, blurring the boundaries, plays the father. This allowed us to meet him, but in essence he is not a real person, but a record of memory, personified fear, magnification. The figure of the father in this way is opening and not against the book.