Open your eyes

“Open your eyes” is a performance based on the stories of Olga Tokarczuk: “Open your eyes, you are no longer alive” and “General rehearsal”.

In “Open your eyes, you're already dead”, the protagonist, disappointed by the monotony of life and the predictability of classic crime stories, reaches for a new book that promises more than uncovering the mystery of who killed. The action takes place in an old palace, the famous author of detective novels invites several writers and crime writers to take part in a board game “in Murderca”. With each moment, measured by the next pages of reading, the line between fiction and life is blurred, the players switch roles, and the biggest mystery turns out not to be who committed the crime, but who writes the story.

“General Trial” is a story about two men unexpectedly trapped in their own apartment. What happened? War, pandemic, environmental pollution, or maybe the end of the world... External reality reaches them in the form of shreds of a message on the radio and unconfirmed guesses. When they invite the neighbors from below, it turns out that they know just as little and are just as afraid. Locked in four walls, they analyze their lives so far and together try to prepare for the impending disaster.

In both cases, ordinariness turns out to be a transitory state, fragile and prone to disruption — either because of the heroes or against their will.

*** The digital copy of Hans Memling's “Judgment of the Last Judgment”, used in the projections for the performance, comes from the collection of the National Museum in Gdańsk.