It is a journey to the heart of the most disturbing mysteries of the human condition that Krzysztof Warlikowski offers us by turning to a murderous history that, at least since we have had accounts of it, sees torturers and victims clash, from ancient Greece to the Nazi tragedy of the 20th century. He summons tragic authors, mainly Euripides (Alcestis) and Aeschylus (The Oresteia), as well as contemporary writers, Hanna Krall (Apollonia), Jonathan Littell (The Kindly Ones), J. M. Coetzee (Elizabeth Costello) and others. He takes us along the road of collective introspection, questioning the oldest to understand the most recent. Forced sacrifices (Iphigenia offered to the gods by Agamemnon, Apollonia denounced to the Germans for having hidden Jews) or voluntary sacrifices of victims (Alcestis thus saving Admetus) are here compared with the “justifying” theories of the torturers in a movement that escapes Manichaeism. There is no provocation in this questioning that presents the desire for vengeance as well as the search for pardon, two ideas that are perpetuated from generation to generation, destroying those who are prisoners of such a haunting past. Krzysztof Warlikowski places at the centre of the stage the ongoing battle between good and evil, without any possible ways out. A theatre in which the voices of the victims and those of the torturers are carried, without the least sentimentality, by actors whose intensity and rigour is well-known, accompanied by live music. With force and accuracy, they make the spirits of the past speak as though they were alive, as though they were our contemporaries, making possible a re-appropriation of our collective history and our individual stories. In never fearing to put itself in danger, in renouncing simplistic categorizations, in accepting the darkest as well as the most luminous part of human behaviours, Krzysztof Warlikowski's theatre forces us to deal with the contradictions that run through us. With the presentation of specific destinies, he once again touches the universal. JFP
Distribution
Direction Krzysztof Warlikowski
Adaptation Krzysztof Warlikowski, Piotr Gruszczynski, Jacek Poniedzialek
Dramaturgy Piotr Gruszczynski
Video Pawel Lozinski
Music Pawel Mykietyn, Renate Jett, Piotr Maslanka, Pawel Stankiewicz
Songs, text et voice Renate Jett
Lighting Felice Ross
Sound Lukasz Lalinski
Scenography and costumes Malgorzata Szczesniak
Make-up Gonia Wielocha
Hairdressing Robert Kupisz
With Andrzej Chyra, Magdalena Cielecka, Ewa Dalkowska, Malgorzata Hajewska-Krzysztofik ou Danuta Stenka, Wojciech Kalarus, Marek Kalita, Zygmunt Malanowicz, Adam Nawojczyk, Maja Ostaszewska or Jolanta Fraszynska, Magdalena Poplawska, Jacek Poniedzialek, Anna Radwan-Gancarczyk or Monika Niemczyk, Maciej Stuhr, Tomasz Tyndyk
And the musicians Pawel Bomert, Piotr Maslanka, Pawel Stankiewicz, Fabian Wlodarek
Production Adam Sienkiewicz (Poland), Nicolas Roux (France-Belgium-Switzerland)
Production
Production Nowy Teatr (Varsovie)
Coproduction Festival d'Avignon, Théâtre national de Chaillot, Théâtre de la Place (Liège), Théâtre de la Monnaie (Bruxelles), Wiener Festwochen (Vienne), Comédie de Genève centre dramatique, Narodowy Stary Teatr (Cracovie)
Spectacle accueilli avec l'aide du Ministère de la Culture polonais et l'Institut Adam Mickiewicz
Avec l'aide de l'Onda pour les surtitres