Date: 26.08.2024 / Monday
Time: 5:30 pm, 7 pm, 9:30 pm
Place: Room C_101, Art Factory in Lodz, 3 Tymienieckiego Street
Admission: free / prior booking of free tickets is required
Booking of free tickets: from July 29, 2024 / via kicket.com portal
5:30 pm
Performance "Songs of Eurypides" | 2007 | CHOREA Theatre | Poland
Direction: Tomasz Rodowicz
Film: 01.07.2009, Elektrociepłownia Szombierki in Bytom | Creators: International Contemporary Dance Conference, XVI Dance Art Festival in Bytom
Duration: 60 minutes (no intermissions)
Viewers' age: 16+
7 pm
Performance "Play[ing] Mr. Cogito Games" | 2008 | CHOREA Theatre | Poland
Direction: Tomasz Rodowicz
Film: 26.03.2011, Art Factory in Lodz | Creators: TVi LODMAN, Uczelniane Centrum Informatyczne Politechniki Łódzkiej
Duration: 80 minutes (no intermissions)
Viewers' age: 14+
9:30 pm
Performance "Grotowski - an attempt to retreat" | 2010 | CHOREA Theatre | Poland
Direction: Tomasz Rodowicz
Film: 06-07.04.2011, Teatr na Woli in Warsaw | Creators: XXI Warsaw Theatre Meetings Festival
Duration: 105 minutes (no intermissions)
Viewers' age: 15+
Creators: CHOREA Theatre
Direction: Tomasz Rodowicz
Music: Tomasz Rodowicz
Music interpretation and choir leader: Tomasz Krzyżanowski
Choreography: CHOREA Theatre
Light and sound: Tomasz Krukowski
Visuals: Paweł Passini
Costumes: Weselina Nikołow
Premiere cast: Dominika Krzyżanowska Gorzkiewicz, Dorota Porowska, Katarzyna Tadeusz, Anna Bogdanowicz, Janusz Adam Biedrzycki, Hubert Domański, Paweł Korbus, Tomasz Krzyżanowski, Maciej Maciaszek, Tomasz Rodowicz, Arkadiusz Rogoziński
Premiere: 01.09.2007, Fabryka Sztuki in Lodz
The second version of the performance has been played since 04.07.2009
Cast: Dominika Krzyżanowska Gorzkiewicz, Małgorzata Lipczyńska, Dorota Porowska, Katarzyna Tadeusz, Elina Toneva, Janusz Adam Biedrzycki, Hubert Domański, Paweł Korbus, Tomasz Krzyżanowski, Jakub Michalski, Maciej Maciaszek, Jakub Michalski, Tomasz Rodowicz
Costumes: CHOREA Theatre
When, together with the Earthfall group, we were finishing the Bakkus project, I knew that for CHOREA it was not the end of work on Euripides and his Bacchae. Soon, we have made a risky attempt to tell this ambiguous tragedy employing a totally different formula – using only the chorus parts from Bacchae and movement. The chorus is the protagonist of the drama. The Songs of Euripides performance is therefore a translation of the ancient choruses through gesture, dancing and singing into modern theatre. It seeks a new language of meanings in communication with the world: the language of the contemporary choreia. In this performance, gestures and movement are extreme, and the bacchae break the boundaries of gravity in their passion and elation. The text in ancient Greek clashes with the excellent translation by Jerzy Łanowski, and the contemporary music by Maciej Rychły is contrasted with the bacchae chord of antiquity.
The Songs of Euripides performance revolves around the women who emerge from the chorus – the bacchae, who in collective elation reach the most intimate and hidden areas of human soul. However, in sanctimonious ecstasy, these areas may be dangerous and lead to crime, both 2,500 years ago and today. The songs trigger dark emotions, energies which, with the suspicious presence of Dionysus, provoke the degraded ritual. The ambiguous rite ends in a mob lynching a misfit who tries to go beyond a social taboo too boldly. Dionysus does not herald a new life here: he only suggests arguments in order to show the scapegoat.
Tomasz Rodowicz
"Play[ing] Mr. Cogito Games"
Based on Zbigniew Herbert’s texts
Creators: CHOREA Theatre
Direction: Tomasz Rodowicz
Music: Tomasz Krzyżanowski, Maciej Maciaszek, Sebastian Klim
Choreography: CHOREA Theatre
Light and sound: Tomasz Krukowski
Visualisations: Jaromir Dziewic, Piotr Wdówka, Joanna Chmielecka
Literary support: Joanna Chmielecka
Cast: Joanna Chmielecka, Julia Jakubowska, Dominika Krzyżanowska Gorzkiewicz, Małgorzata Lipczyńska, Janusz Adam Biedrzycki, Hubert Domański, Sebastian Klim, Tomasz Krzyżanowski, Maciej Maciaszek
Premiere: 8.11.2008, Fabryka Sztuki in Lodz
"One learns the game by watching how others play.
But how does the observer distinguish in this case between players' mistakes and correct play? (...)
Look at what we call games.
What do they have in common?
What still counts as a game and what no longer does?
Can you give the boundary? No.
You can draw one; for none has so far been drawn."
(Ludwig Wittgenstein, "Philosophical Investigations")
Playing Mr Cogito is an attempt to transfer the poet’s thoughts to the stage. Precise poetical constructions become disassembled into parts, which results in unveiling their elementary living meanings and exposing the authentic power of words. Fragments of Zbigniew Herbert’s texts are put into new relations.
Three basic theatrical means, words, movements and music, build a stage reality guided by its own rules. They create an inseparable entity – a new chorea. Movements do not illustrate the words, music does not tell the story on its own. It is only a combination of the three that gives birth to a multi-layered world of rather surprising meanings and tangible tension. The surrealism permeating these stage images affects the senses, the subconscious and cogito in the same strong way.
The struggle with Mr C’s ideals takes place in sixteen games. Each of them has its own rules set in accordance with the rules of the unique method of CHOREA. Games played with the poet’s thoughts constitute an attempt to find out what Herbert can tell us in today’s reality. They make it possible for the poet himself to ask us where we are. But who is he talking to? Who is listening to him today?
Tomasz Rodowicz
"Grotowski - an attempt to retreat"
Creators: CHOREA Theatre
Direction: Tomasz Rodowicz
Music: Tomasz Krzyżanowski
Choreography: CHOREA Theatre
Stage design: Paweł Korbus, Tomasz Rodowicz
Light and sound: Tomasz Krukowski
Cast: Joanna Chmielecka, Julia Jakubowska, Małgorzata Lipczyńska, Janusz Adam Biedrzycki, Piotr Grabowski, Paweł Korbus, Tomasz Rodowicz
Premiere: 13.08.2010, 20.08.2010, International Theatre Festival Retroperspektywy, Fabryka Sztuki in Lodz
This project is both exciting and risky: ‘Jerzy Grotowski – the greatest revolutionary of the 20th century theatre’. I am coming back to Grotowski after so many years partly as a result of my protest against what has been done to this person and partly because I feel I owe him something – as a human being, but most of all as an artist. Having seen his Apocalypsis cum figuris in 1974, I decided I have to do theatre – with no possibility of retreat. Today I feel I need to confront his practical achievements, his thoughts related to the theatre, man and religion. I do not want to achieve it through more recollections, conferences or seminars but through the practical experience of people who want to deal with theatre and need to know if they are somehow related to him or not. Is this a closed door or maybe there is a scratch, a mark, anxiety, taint and heritage to be confronted in order to see if you are worth it or if you should stand up to it and reject it?
I started working on this project with people who, because of their age, had no contact with Grotowski, his para-theatrical and theatrical practice, the ‘art as a vehicle’ period, his actors or anyone who worked with him. What they knew about him is just as much as an average young person does – almost nothing. In most cases, they kept their distance. It was more of a moderate interest than fascination. For them, this man, who turned the world theatre upside down, was a strange, historical and archived cultural figure. It was a perfect starting point. Those people were ready, without any ideology or bias, to start checking who or what he was for them. Each actor/performer tried finding an answer to a question which was important to them, e.g. how does Grotowski’s image of an actor relate to the pro-egocentric education provided by modern theatre schools? Can you ‘refer’ to Grotowski while looking for your own personal identity? To what extent are his rules valid in a mental asylum? Can you create theatre/performance without wanting to be an actor? Most probably, any other group of people would ask different questions.
Through this project, I would like to find out if there is anything in his heritage which is meaningful for these young people. If that is the case, it must be confronted with their thinking about themselves, life, theatre and art, and they will face it themselves. My role is only to walk among them and tell them if I believe or not. Sometimes, I will add something, but I will not exaggerate, I promise.
Tomasz Rodowicz
