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Witold Gombrowicz – Bruno Schulz

Powszechny Theatre, Radom, Poland

Director: Waldemar Śmigasiewicz

Polish with Hungarian subtitles

1 hours 15 minutes, without breaks.

(On the basis of Witold Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke and Bruno Schulz’s Emeryta/Pensioner)

Waldemar Śmigasiewicz, the director and scriptwriter of the play, based his vision of the drama on the following idea: Witold Gombrowicz and Bruno Schulz were close to each other simply by virtue of the fact that they were contemporaries. Furthermore, they shared affinities of thought with regards to their attitudes towards existence. However, they were distant from each other from the perspective of the contexts of their work as writers.

When they make their childhoods the themes of their works, they each do so in a very different, even contradictory manner. In the case of Schultz, childhood represents an escape towards an idealized genesis, which provides a guaranteed refuge from the changes of the times in which he lives as a poet. In the case of Gombrowicz, he seems to be striving to rid himself of “powerlessness, impotence, and immaturity,” while he is awakening with considerable distress to the fact that he cannot flee from himself. He will always remain a boorish youngster ceaselessly in search of his lost personality. The Polish theater company has brought these two worlds, which seem to be both merging and colliding, together in an exciting, engaging production.

Színészek/Actors: Magdalena Placek, Łukasz Mazurek, Włodzimierz Mancewicz, Adam Majewski, Robert Mazurek, Jarosław Rabenda, Łukasz Węgrzynowski, Kamil Woźniak, Andrzej Surowiec, Adam Trzos

Díszlet- és jelmeztervező/set and costume designer: Maciej Preyer; Zeneszerző/composer: Mateusz Śmigasiewicz; Dramaturg/dramaturge: Waldemar Śmigasiewicz

Director

Waldemar Śmigasiewicz

Kaszás Attila Stage

Waldemar Śmigasiewicz

Waldemar Śmigasiewicz – director and pedagogue. The Professor of Warsaw Theatre Academy, who has been affiliated with various theatres, among others with Powszechny, Ateneum, Polonia, Och – Theatre in Warsaw, Old, Bagatela, Słowacki, STU in Cracow, the Municipal Theatre in Gdynia, Powszechny in Radom, and National Theatre in Skopje.

As an expert in Gombrowicz, he has staged a few times: Ferdydurke, among others in Powszechny Theatre in Łódź (Best Director Award during 27^th Opole Theatre Confrontations and the Golden Mask – Critics’ Award), in the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Krakow (Grand Prix during the European Theatre Schools Festival in Lyon in 1987); Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy; Cosmos, among others in Bagatela Theatre in Cracow (Best Director Award during 24^th Opole Theatre Confrontations in 1999); The Marriage, Pornography; Hulajgęba based on Gombrowicz prose (Grand Prix during the International Theatre Discoveries of Europe in Saint Petersburg in 2004); Trans-Atlantyk or Operetta.

Apart from Gombrowicz’s plays, his achievements include also Mrożek’s plays, among others Tango in the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Krakow (award during the festival in Millwaukee, the USA in 1990), Ubu the King by Alfred Jarry (Grand Prix during the 5^th Toruń Festival of Dolls’ Theatres).

He has also interpreted the texts of Pirandello, Kafka, Pinter, Kolada, Dostojewski, Czechov. He has worked for the Television Theatre as well, where he realized, among others, the opera of K. Penderecki - The Bravest Knight, Diaboliada by M. Bułhakov, Death by W. Allen and Madame Molier by J. Anouilha.

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