Prześluga, Malina

It would seem that it is a day like any other in a decent bourgeois house, but it happened just as the title says. After killing her husband, Stephanie sawed off his hand with a bread knife. One would think that the cruel Stephanie is finally free, happy and filled with love for the world around her. She puts away in the fridge the things she no longer wants to have anything to do with. All she has to do is get rid of the stains, which is helped by a stain remover and a number of fabric softeners. The narrative reveals her motives - she loved her husband, but he cheated on her. Suddenly her whole world was taken from her, as well as the happiness that she experienced and which defined her. As the monodrama director, Kuba Kowalski, says: "A story about a modern family and forbidden love that leads to murder. Stephanie Moles is a crime story in which we learn step by step 'who killed'. On the other hand, it is a melodrama, dealing with the subject of sick relationships in an average family from a big city. It is also a journey through conventions - the tragedy is interrupted by black humour, the psychodrama turns into a slapstick comedy. This crime story with a twist or noir comedy has an almost novel-like narrative - a part of the text is told in the third person and a part in the first, with an appearance of Matilda, the daughter's point of view as well.

(source: teatrdramatyczny.pl).

Train operating on the Prasno-Żyrostaw line. In one compartment - Elder Woman, Disney's Princess, Slim Man and the Obnoxious Creep. The first scene is like a look through a camera lens: objective, cool, invaluable. Passengers exchange a casual politeness. But the camera reaches deeper and deeper, penetrates, explores the inner world of characters. The train, which may never reach the planned station, becomes a limbo, suspended between life and death, the journey and the station. What awaits these people, not living, not dead, at the final station - remains unknown...

Initially strongly stereotypical, not very sophisticated friendly characters quickly plunge into their inner monologues. Gradually each of them reveals the hidden side of their personality. Passengers become increasingly obsessed with thinking about their phobias, fears and a difficult past: the air becomes heavy, and the dog, the leitmotiv of art invoked by the train manager's voice, is sinking its fangs into its body, finally drawing blood:

In the culminating scene the Elder Woman hangs herself on the belt unfastened from the elegant bag of the Disney Princess. Passengers sit squeezed together in the company of a dead body. On a train to nowhere chaos reigns. Gradually, however, the titular "tenderness" appears. The characters get names, find connections between themselves - even if distant. A moment of closeness, even the temporary and epidermal one, allows to forget about the pain of existence. The train moves on, the dog is tamed, a sentimental scout song can be heard.

Malina Prześluga wrote her play with the Television Theatre in mind - in fact, in the way the narration is conducted, one can see the way cinematic tricks inspired it, but it is nevertheless a drama that can be equally well represented in the theatre in the hands of a director who allows the two narratives to coexist: the spoken and the silent. Ultimately, these two perspectives intertwine to create a poignant tale of human loneliness and loss. The author treats her story with a characteristic astringent humour and irony, which does not take away any seriousness from the play, but instead brings the audience even more emotionally close to the characters: mundane, funny, but in their own way sublime. In the text, the author uses different types of narration and ways of conducting monologues and dialogues, a varied language, confessing that "during the writing of this play, language was a very important point of reference: it reflected the level of immersion in the personality of the characters, the colloquial dialogue was transformed into poetry, a free stream of consciousness into a descriptive and external narrative...

• The play has been translated into Croatian, so far it has had three stage readings - one at the Warsaw Dramatic Theatre directed by Magdalena Miklasz, the second at the Opole Puppet and Actor Theatre directed by Adam Nalepa and the third at the @TD Theatre in Zagreb, directed by Rajna Racz.

The main characters in this text are women: Alina, her daughter, Mum, and Mum's Mum. Alina becomes pregnant at a young age and encounters ostracism from women related to her and then stubborn indoctrination to the role of mother. The lack of support and her inability to find herself in a difficult situation force Alina to make the dramatic decision to have an abortion. It is easy to judge her as the only one responsible, but is it right? All the women in her family are burdened with some kind of genetic flaw, and the question of what it actually is remains the central theme of this play. Is it about the gene of a stereotypical Polish mother 'responsible for compassion and entering into many roles at once'? Between them there are auxiliary characters, elements of the cultural or metaphysical order: The First Cell, the Primary Social Cell, Our Lady, the Light, the Choir of Passers-by and the Choir of Saints, which conduct the narrative, allowing us to approach the problem from many perspectives.

The author refers to the topic of infanticide, a subject eagerly taken up by the media, particularly in infamous cases like that of Katarzyna W. Malina Prześluga, however, avoids easy judgments and accusations, wondering about the universal concept of the origin of evil and its causes, social conditions, motherhood, inheritance. Sour milk poses questions without imposing clear answers.

• Text awarded in the 6th edition of the Metaphors of Reality competition - won the main prize (ex-aequo), the journalists' award and the audience award.
• The text had its premiere in November 2013 at Teatr Polski in Poznań, directed by Ula Kijak.

"The drama is to a large extent a monologue of the main character, who also presents his views and attitude to life through the performance. We get to know the story of a boy who, after a serious accident, is paralysed and sentenced to a wheelchair. The new situation affects his relations with his loved ones. His mother becomes his nurse and the girlfriend only visits him out of pity. Subsequent scenes show the daily struggle with the disease, the nervous looks of the people he meets, the lack of understanding and longing for life before the accident. His world turns into one of an unlimited imagination, thanks to which he can experience things that even healthy people do not dream of. The protagonist treats both himself and others consciously and not entirely seriously.

In life - unlike in a film - you can't keep anything in a stop frame. For the main character, it is the moment of an accident that reappraises and changes his life forever. More and more often we see the real world through the lens of films or computer games, sometimes a momentary pause is needed to see that reality is governed by completely different laws".

(source: nowesztuki.pl)

• Malina Prześluga’s play received a distinction in XXI CSD Competition in Poznań.

Life is made up of small activities, funny little things. Walking the dog. Renovating a house. Feeling the child kicking in the womb. This bliss can be suddenly interrupted in an instant.

This is what happens in the polyphonic drama of Malina Prześluga. A sudden bombardment knocks the characters out of their rhythm, disrupting the seemingly inviolable order. All "problems of the first world" cease to matter. Someone's husband doesn't come home, a dog dies, cinemas and cafés are closed, buildings turn into rubble. The war continues at full strength. And it gets worse and worse. The average middle class becomes refugees. But Prześluga does not mention about, e.g., Syria - she writes about hypothetical Poland from the future, torn apart by military conflict.

Seemingly privileged citizens are effecting a massive exodus abroad. This escape is preceded by a scene of an absurd course of being a refugee (which "helps" to get into the mindset of the upcoming decline). Not everyone will succeed in this journey. But a person in an extreme situation can develop an unbreakable will to live, like "wasps in a tea glass, trees that grow on concrete, a two-year-old potato that sprouts in a basement without light"... It is precisely this power that makes yet another person sail on overcrowded pontoons towards the borders of Europe, despite being aware of the great risk. This problem may once affect us too, even if for now we are seemingly untouchable and alienated.

"After all, all those everyday events that seem insurmountable can lose their relevance from one day to the next. And suddenly all our mental well-being, this carefree mindlessness ends just like that". - says the author in an interview given to the monthly magazine Dialog (9/2019).

Prześluga has created a work of art in which she masterfully changes her tones - first she puts the viewer in a state of comfort, puts them to sleep and then attacks with all her might. In the finale, the fate of man is commented on by a tree and a stone - silent inanimate structures which ultimately gain more importance than a degraded, crushed man. And the leitmotiv words 'Everything's fine', although for the most part of the play they appear as a mantra, a self-affirmation and then a kind of prayer to help us survive the nightmarish war - in the final song they turn against those who turn their eyes away from tragedy.

Kuba is an adult guy with intellectual disabilities. His dreams are simple. For everyone to be "gud". For the world to be more comprehensible and easier to understand. The text, which could become a banal story about the noble naivety of the protagonist from the underprivileged group, quickly reveals the traps set for the reader.

In the justification of the verdict, the Chapter of the Gdynia Drama Award writes:

"Malina Prześluga used her experience as an author for children, but in order to write an uncomfortable play, definitely for adults. The fairy-tale frame of the Hundred Acre Wood, which forms the framework of the protagonist's imagination, is cleverly disassembled here to reveal the danger and false infantilisation in our approach to intellectual disabilities. The author precisely and quite cruelly pushes the viewer (and perhaps herself) out of the comfort and easy empathy zone, constructing a character that is neither wise, nor nice, nor pretty, nor good. He does not dish out morals or simple solutions, he does not allow his character to be liked easily and does not succumb to the pressure of political correctness. The play resonates on several levels, it can also be read as a political text, about class resentments, about the fantasies of excluded groups, about the false protectionism of privileged groups, about the sources of violence, and finally about helplessness [...]".

The author uses very different rhythms and registers (everyday language and the language of political populism intertwine with the poetic and prose-inspired language of A. A. Milne). Prześluga creates a story which is an expression of frustration growing in the face of deepening inequalities. At the same time, it avoids the temptation to design a social utopia. Kuba does not agree with the world that he does not understand, a world that limits him - but his opposition is a spark that quickly turns into an unmanageable fire. The hero, having gained total power in his fantasy, takes revenge on random people and does not avoid violence. The words of the jury become extremely important in this context: Retard "from a simple story about a man excluded turns into a disturbing parable about the birth of evil". After all, the 20th century history has shown that the roots of evil are not at all obvious.