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The End of The World is a bitter comedy about being disappointed with adulthood that can be described as a poetic drama and is referring to the theatre of the absurd tradition. However, it is set in a concrete reality of Katowice, Warsaw, and Włoszczowa.
To Stop the Time is a text written with the puppet theatre in mind – flexible, abstract, full of metaphors and questions with no answers. From its characters we must mark out Second, who wanted to be a part of another minute, Minute, who didn’t want to pass, and Hour, who didn’t want to come. Those characters form an “impossible” but strong friendship – after all, those characters shouldn’t be able to even meet! – and they venture together to find the almighty clock, who will let them be whoever they want to be, to be freed from the power of time.
The Birds are for Dinner is a play aimed at kids but it stands out thanks to its mature message. The world seen through the eyes of a child unmasks the absurdity of the grey reality of the adults and shows that sometimes it’s worth pondering over seemingly obvious things. For kids, it is a story about the power of dream and imagination and how to function in the society.
At night, when everyone is asleep and the Little Princess is all alone in her room, the closet’s door slowly opens... and reveals an Evil Witch standing there. Fortunately, the Little Princess knows exactly what to do in those circumstances – she has to hastily and at the top of her lungs call for Mum. Brutally awoken from her sleep Mum runs to calm her little girl down. And that’s enough to make the Witch disappear because what Mum says must be true... but how will the Little Princess deal with the Witch once Mum’s words lose their power?
Distinguishing Features is an intense, hallucinatory story about the journey of teen Alisha who, after using the “sickiest legal high on the market”, finds herself on the life and death threshold. Or, as other character puts it, it is a story called “Alisha in Nightmareland”. The structure of the text is based on the smooth transitions from the hospital’s reality to psychedelic world created in the girl’s mind.
Fadey is a first grader. He’s shy and has a stutter. He’d love to be a part of a group but the other kids in his class won’t accept him. It’s hard to tell why since they all have a struggle of their own: Charm can’t focus, Timmy D is frightful, and Little Miss Perfect has to always be the best in everything. It all changes once a new student – Candy, joins their class. The girl is blunt to a fault, can’t get any joke and has a short fuse. Now everybody turns on her instead of Fadey so he should be happy... but somehow he’s not.
1981. Janek is a caretaker in the Women’s Clothing Factory in Chorzęciny. This witty Casanova is a piece of a two-faced bastard. Thanks to his charisma and determination he’s able to wrap around his finger two women with strikingly different worldviews: Anna, a tailor and a member of the local division of “Solidarity”, and Wanda, a major in Security Service and a devoted communist. Janek cleverly hides the existence of “the other one” from his lovers – he has a thought-out strategy.
Jarosław Jakubowski’s The Funeral is a grotesque, mysterious, and irrational play. It follows the story of a person called Him, a middle-aged man, a husband of 10 years, a father who in a Kafkaesque style is baffled by the absurdity of the events around him. The play does not show the actual ceremony as it starts a few days prior. The plot of The Funeral is divided into two sets.
A group of individuals addicted to the Internet – Nikola and her lover Bruno, a couple Melania and Konstanty, a senior citizen Magda and a nerd Izydor – is taken to a secluded villa in the middle of a wood for an off-online rehab organised by the mysterious organisation called INFERNET. The driver Mikołaj takes off and leaves them stranded with no connection with the world. He ensures them that their coach will appear soon but just has to deal with something first. However, the coach does not show up and the group becomes more and more frustrated.
She and He – bound by love so overwhelming that they slowly lose the boundaries between their selves. They look through one another creating their intimate hymn. But with the passing months, scorching June turning into melancholic August, their love slowly transforms. The passion fades but does love vanish alongside it? Maybe the titular “awakening” is the realisation that in order to find oneself anew one must draw some boundaries?
