Three premiere presentations of the newest Krystian Lupa' production "Waiting Room. 0" will take place during the Congress.
Imagine…
A midnight train pulls up to a station. A voice on the loudspeaker ask the passengers to transfer to another train. Some of the passengers disembark, and the engine pushes off. No one at the station seems to be able to answer any questions (what is the name of this town?). All the passengers can do is settle down in the waiting room, the only decent (warm) place, and wait for morning.
Disorientation, fatigue, and stress can and do lead to the formation of micro-communities. When night falls, these groups are subjected to a dissection of sorts. Night can itself become a penetrating x-ray image of something much greater — “our universe,” to put it haughtily.
Let the actors make the first move. Let them carry into this world their own imagination, concerns, and desires, contained in a sketch — an embryo — of a character.
The playwright may then step in and cultivate settings, letting the nascent matter wander and grow in an ever-changing environment.
(Krystian Lupa)
A performance is created in a laboratory work process. It is experimental, although not because of the method (as the last performances by Lupa are the point of reference), but due to the confrontation of two extremely strong personalities that differ from each other in terms of generations and aesthetics.
Krystian Lupa, born in 1943, is one of the most important Polish theatre directors who built his position with interpretations of the great European prose – Austrian (Thomas Bernhard, Robert Musil) and Russian (Fyodor Dostoyevsky); lately he has been creating his own original performances-vivisections on the icons of American pop culture (Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol). Dorota Masłowska, born in 1983, is a writer iconic to people in their twenties and thirties (she is the author of two novels, “White and Red” and “Paw królowej”, and two dramas, “A Couple of Poor, Polish-Speaking Romanians” and “Między nami dobrze jest”).
Being deeply set in Polish realities, Masłowska observes, with the sophistication of a perfect sociologist, the rotten everyday life of our courtyards, and then describes it in a vivid and stylized language – sharply, without any gilding, or sentiments. By contrast, Lupa is a real sage, philosopher, and master who prefers to make use of dense symbolism, psychoanalysis and dreams in his description of the surrounding world.
Krystian Lupa
WAITING ROOM.0 / Polski Theatre in Wrocław // Poland
text, direction and stage design: Krystian Lupa
literary cooperation: Dorota Masłowska
costumes: Piotr Skiba
video director: Bartosz Nalazek
video editor: Konrad Styczeń
ambient: Daniel Mariański
blog co-direction: Hanna Klepacka
lighting: Kazimierz Blacharski
interlude installation: self-portraits of actors/characters
cast: Sylwia Boroń (guest appearance), Krzesisława Dubielówna, Anna Ilczuk, Dagmara Mrowiec, Halina Rasiakówna, Ewa Skibińska, Marta Zięba, Marcin Czarnik, Mirosław Haniszewski, Rafał Kronenberger, Marcin Pempuś, Adam Szczyszczaj, Wojciech Ziemiański
Trickster 2011 is curated by Agata Siwiak
In cooperation with Polski Theatre in Wrocław
