Kabaret warszawski

New performance venues call for new forms. For the opening, come hell or high water, of his creation venue, the Nowy Teatr in Warsaw, Krzysztof Warlikowski wanted to imagine a show that forced him to abandon his habits to question today's theatre in another way and, through it, to give the floor to artists working in a world in total upheaval. The choice of the cabaret, as a performance form and gathering place, wasn't innocent. In its name it combines the idea of freedom, fragility, the idea of encounter, sharing, the idea of a strong alliance between words and musical notes, bodies dancing and bodies singing. For the Polish director, it was the last refuge for those who reject the too great weight of standards, whether they are social or aesthetic, for those who are intentionally on the margins, for those who search and invent without any certainty of success. A threatened venue because it is a synonym for resistance, the cabaret is also a space that has been crossed by the little stories of men and the history of the world, a venue of echoes where the past light-heartedly mingles with the present. To create his own cabaret, which will be, like a symbol, presented in the theatre of the new theatre “factory” of the Festival d'Avignon, FabricA, Krzysztof Warlikowski primarily used two works that deal with the same theme: John Van Druten's play, I Am a Camera, and John Cameron Mitchell's film, Shortbus. Two works that treat a violent period in history: the rise of Nazism in German for the former, and post-9/11 in New York for the latter. Two periods of crisis, doubts, during which buried and repressed fears were liberated and generated in return a normalization that aimed at smothering them. In the show imagined by the Nowy Teatr troupe as the portrait of a group of artists in resistance, behaviours are liberated, words are exchanged and directly addressed to the public since, in the cabaret, and the fourth wall of the theatre is erased. Against the danger of the standardization of thought, art is laid claim to here as a remedy, even if this remedy can cost the artists dearly, the artists who, through their practice, can become isolated, ghettoized or worse, choose to shut themselves up in themselves. Between political pamphlet, scathing philosophical-artistic attack and joyous round of song, this cabaret, imagined as “Warsawian” will go beyond its geographic borders to confront us with a uniformly alienating world and force us to ponder what “freedom” can still mean. JFP

Direction Krzysztof Warlikowski
Inspired of I Am a Camera by John van Druten, Les Bienveillantes by Jonathan Littell, Shortbus by John Cameron Mitchell et Tango by Justin Vivian Bond
Adaptation Krzysztof Warlikowski, Piotr Gruszczyński, Szczepan Orłowski
Scenography and costumes Małgorzata Szczęśniak
Lighting Felice Ross
Music Paweł Mykietyn
Choreography Claude Bardouil

With Claude Bardouil, Stanisława Celińska, Andrzej Chyra, Magdalena Cielecka, Ewa Dałkowska, Bartosz Gelner, Małgorzata Hajewska-Krzysztofik, Wojciech Kalarus, Redbad Klijnstra, Zygmunt Malanowicz, Maja Ostaszewska, Piotr Polak, Jacek Poniedziałek, Magdalena Popławska, Maciej Stuhr
and musicians Paweł Bomert, Piotr Maślanka, Paweł Stankiewicz, Fabian Włodarek

Production Nowy Teatr
Coproduction Festival d'Avignon, Théâtre national de Chaillot (Paris), Comédie de Clermont-Ferrand Scène nationale, Théâtre de la Place (Liège), les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, NInA (Institut National Audiovisuel)
With the support of Institut Adam Mickiewicz and of Institut Polonais de Paris