Everything is fine as long as we die in the right order

Why Martinique?

I like Martinique's work. After the performance “My son walks, only a little slower”, which I realized at the Ateneum Theater in Warsaw, I read more of his plays and discovered that they are all in some way similar to each other. In every collective hero there is a modern family. Adult children who want to leave home and parents who are trying to come to terms with their imminent departure. The moment of separation turns out to be a painful process revealing both difficult relationships and unmet needs, hopes, hidden anger and grief. This is also the case in the play “Everything is fine.” This is the record of one evening, during which the family finally breaks up, illusions about mutual relations, success and happiness disappear. There is an acute sense of abandonment. I have been looking at the intimate family space in the theater for a long time, exploring the bonds that shape us. The vivisection of the family that Martinic carries out is particularly moving and disturbingly close to me. It reveals a lack of closeness, understanding and compassion. It reveals privacy and loneliness. Such an image of the family becomes for me a poignant mirror of our world, hungry for love.

Iwona Kempa Director

IWONA KEMPA — theatre director, professor at the Faculty of Directing and Dramaturgy at the Cracow AST. She held the following positions: Artistic Director of the W. Horzyca Theatre in Toruń and programme advisor of the International KONTAKT Festival (2006-2012), artistic director of the Małopolska Garden of Art at the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre in Krakow (2012-2016), Dean of the Department of Drama Directing AST in Krakow (2016-2021). Laureate of many festivals, including: Art Direction Interpretations (Laur Konrad 2008 for H.Levin's Pakmanatki), Kontrapunkt (2003 and 2005), Premiere (2004), Festival of Contemporary Dramaturgy Reality presented (2004, 2007, 2019). According to Bergman, confidential conversations received, among others, the Journalists Award of the KONTAKT festival in 2009, Za Moment by P. Assmusen the S. Wyspiański Prize for the Krakow 2012 theatrical event, Negroes in Florence according to V. Rudan again the “Wyspiański” award in 2017. For many years, the director has given the voice almost exclusively to women. In 2018, at the Warsaw Drama Theater, she created Love from the Last Sight according to Vedrana Rudan, showered with awards at the Festival of Contemporary Dramaturgy in 2019 in Zabrze. At Teatr Nowy Proxima, she directed the play Women Explain the World to Me, which was awarded at the Divine Comedy Festival 2019. In 2023, she directed The Rifts of Existence based on essays by Jolanta Brach-Czaina at the J. Słowacki Theatre in Krakow. For several years she has also collaborated with the Ateneum Theatre in Warsaw, where in turn she presents premieres of contemporary dramas, among others: F. Zeller's Father 2017, To Know for Sure A. Bovella 2022, My Son Walks, Only a Little Slower I. Martinica 2025.Its most recent premiere is a performance that gives voice to women based on her own script (co-author: Anna Bas) Body and blood or the unspoken at the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre in Krakow (2025). She is also a graduate of Mindfulness and Compassion. Psychotherapy and research at SWPS University in Warsaw and a Mindfulness teacher in MBCT (Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy) certified by the Oxford Mindfulness Foundation at the University of Oxford.

More information about the Author: Ivor Martinić