“I Started Happening” — a play about the Themerson family

We invite you to a performance dedicated to the extraordinary history and work of Stefan and Franciszka Themersons — artists who were ahead of the era with their originality.

The Themersons are a family of Jewish origin associated with Płock, creators of something valuable contrary to established norms. Among them Stefan and Franciszka; he was a writer, philosopher and essayist, she was, among others, a painter, draftsman and set designer. Together they created avant-garde films and ran a publishing house. Fate led them through Płock, Warsaw, Paris and London.

Stefan, perhaps the most famous resident of Płock in the world, wrote: “Dramatically it seems to me that I am not a noun at all. I'm a verb. For billions of years I was not, then I started happening, now I am happening and soon I will stop happening. These are the characteristics of the verb, not the noun.”

The performance will feature Mariusz Pogonowski — an actor of the Jerzy Szaniawski Drama Theatre in Płock, who directed this play and wrote a script for it based, among others, on the book “Between the windows. Polish-Jewish Stories” by Rafał Kowalski. She will perform together with Katarzyna Koziorz: dancer, theatre actress, choreographer and dance teacher, a graduate of the Academy of Theatre Arts at the Faculty of Dance Theatre in Bytom, collaborating with, among others, the Teater-National Opera in Warsaw.

The musical setting will be provided by cellist Marcin Malikowski, a graduate of the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in St. Petersburg with solo and chamber music directions, a musician with experience in opera theater, symphony orchestras and chamber ensembles.

Admission is free.