Script (based on motifs taken from fragments of works by Bernard Marie Koltes, Łukasz Ripper and Michał Walczak) and acting: Mateusz Nowak | Director: Stanisław Miedziewski | The monodrama was created in co-operation with the District House of Culture “Węglin” with the Rondo Theatre in Słupsk | Premiere night: 05.05.2011

The audience of the Two Riversides will have a chance to watch an intriguing stage experiment. The monodrama “Theatricality” is performed by the young actor Mateusz Nowak, who is also the author of the script based on the fragments of works by Bernard Marie Koltes, Łukasz Ripper and Michał Walczak. The performance is directed by Stanisław Miedziewski, an experienced artist working with the RONDO Theatre from Słupsk. One should be prepared for a bold challenge of theatrical boundaries.

“It happened again. Once again somebody unceremoniously takes out one string from the weave of the Polish theatre to sew his own patchwork with it. Once again there is a negotiation of proportion between the ‘one’s own’ and the ‘other’s’ looking into a system of multiplied mirrors. In ‘theatricality,’ Mateusz Nowak and Stanisław Miedziewski refer to the Schaeffer’s noble attitude of astonishment, glancing under the lining of phenomena, with the essence of the matter itself – with the performative enactment – at the forefront. Engaging in a ‘play with the play,’ they offer a theatre that is distrustful, mocking its own groundwork, but simultaneously a theatre that is open, confidently and ironically awaiting the possibility to read itself. A theatre at a marketplace of ideas, at a bargain sale of keys and lock-picks. Psychologism, flesh, literariness, publicism? There you go. Come in, buy, leave the stall.” | Grzegorz Kondrasiuk

Awards:
*45. International Wrocław Meetings of One Actor Theatres: individual jury award from Bogusław Kierc, the jury’s “Step Towards Career” award for an exceptionally valuable debut of a young actor, Director of the Toruń Meetings of One Actor Theatres award – an invitation to take part in the 27th One Actor Theatre Festival/Toruń 2012
*1st prize at the 8th “Alone on the Stage” Festival of One Actor Theatres in Słupsk
*2nd prize for “an expressive stage personality and making a bold vivisection of theatrical matter” at the 7th Small Theatres Festival in Lublin
*1st prize at the 5th “MoTyF” Monodrama Festival in Tychy
*Jury award at the 39th Tychy Theatre Meetings
*Performance at the 10th Warsaw Festival of Modern Monodrama

“That is how the actor destroys the theatrical illusion. He brings the viewer brutally to the ground, showing him that he is sitting in the audience at the moment. It is a  gesture of the awareness of the double ontology of theatre as a phenomenon. On the one hand, theatre is only a illusion, where the plot has its own time and the space – its own rights. On the other hand, it is set in a particular reality: of the actor, of the audience, and the real time of the performance. Nowak exposes the ‘theatralicity’ of the performance by addressing the audience and, at the same time, dismantling another dogma of theatre: the distance between the world onstage and the audience. From that moment on, the actor sees the viewer as a partner; a silent interlocutor whom he wants to tell his story.” | Joanna Kowalska, “The New Critical Force,” 30 Jan 2012

“Nowak switches between the characters that he plays with the ease of a schizophrenic with multiple struggling personalities. Regardless of whether we see him in a dramatic or comedic convention, we cannot take our eyes off his face, which he freely uses to express extreme feelings: gravity, contempt, disarming dismay, or youthful coquetry.” | Anna Diduch, “The New Critical Force”, 17 May 2012

STANISŁAW MIEDZIEWSKI (1941) – Film and Theatre director. Works with the Słupsk RONDO Theatre, where he made several dozen monodramas awarded at national and international theatre festivals. Studied directing at the PWSF Film School in Łódź. He was assistant to Jerzy Grzegorzewski. Co-operated with theatres in Poland and abroad, including the Bertolt Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble Theatre.

MATEUSZ NOWAK (1986) – Monodramatist-debutant, actor-amateur, reciter. He creates and takes part in projects in the fields of theatre, artistic word and visual arts (Tragarze Puchu, OPRAWCY, Architektura Słowa, Miasto Poezji). He lives and works in Lublin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

photo: Marcin Moszyński