African Tales by Shakespeare

Krzysztof Warlikowski

Teatro Comunale Luciano Pavarotti, Modena

19/10/2011 ,  19:00  
20/10/2011 ,  19:00  

Direction Krzysztof Warlikowski
Adaptation Krzysztof Warlikowski, Piotr Gruszczyński
Drammaturgy Piotr Gruszczyński
Set design and costumes Małgorzata Szczęśniak
Lighting design Felice Ross
Music Paweł Mykietyn
Choreography Claude Bardouil
Video Kamil Polak
Cast Stanisława Celińska, Ewa Dałkowska, Adam Ferency, Małgorzata Hajewska-Krzysztofik, Wojciech Kalarus, Marek Kalita, Zygmunt Malanowicz, Maja Ostaszewska, Piotr Polak, Jacek Poniedziałek, Magdalena Popławska



Coproduzione Nowy Teatr, Varsavia, Théâtre del la Place, Liegi, Centre dramatique de la Communauté française - Centre européen de création théâtrale et chorégraphique, Prospero, Grand Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg, Théâtre National de Chaillot

Running time 5h with two intermissions (20' and 15')

National Première

Played in Polish with Italian subtitles

Prospero is the international project of theatres in Liege, Modena, Luxembourg, Rennes, Berlin, Lisbon and Tampere which in this year has invited Krzysztof Warlikowski. The earlier productions were directed by Thomas Ostermeier and Alvis Hermanis.
The Prospero Project aims at creating significant cultural events and their promotion across entire Europe which results in construction of the common European culture platform disregarding the national borders. Frim the political and social point of view it draws attention to culture and art as factors encouraging creativity, exchange and cohesion between countries while giving an impulse to social and economic development.

How to stem bleeding of gods? Try it and you are bound to fail. Twilight of gods has touched all areas, even those secular, interpersonal described by Shakespeare. So we bleed together with gods and our blood falls upon us as a black rain which neither brings relief nor refreshment. Exactly the opposite, in the scorching African sun which beats down the characters of J.M. Coetzee’s novel blood dries up with scabs sticking to clean clothes which we wear to hide our decomposition progressing day by day.
Lear, Shylock and Othello – three Shakespeare’s heroes deprived of safe narration, stand before us with genuine force of their demise. A bleeding god is a man who desperately seeks love. A man who suffers miseries of an old man, Jew and Black - surrounded by women entangled with his weakness. Sooner or later everyone is to experience condition of Lear, Othello or Shylock by becoming an animal banned from its herd. Shakespeare depicted these states through a tragic prism of history’s titans acting in circumstances of tale and myth. Coetzee, knowing the apartheid reality, describes his characters only through categories of existence. He does not create soaring plots but instead designs intimate and unbearable psychotic worlds through which his own broken pride is filtered.
African Tales by Shakespeare is a new show by Krzysztof Warlikowski made with Nowy Theatre’s team and artists who have accompanied him for years. Director who has already staged ten Shakespeare dramas now creates his own fascinating vision of man extracted from the space of border experiences.

http://www.prospero-online.eu

Krzysztof Warlikowski

Born in Szczecin in 1962, has established himself on the cutting edge of contemporary theatre. A distinguished director with over 30 productions to his credit, including no fewer than 11 stagings of Shakespeare's plays for both Polish and foreign theatres, Krzysztof Warlikowski has worked with Peter Brook, Ingmar Bergman, Giorgio Strehler and Krystian Lupa, and has directed throughout Poland, France, Italy, and Germany.

Krzysztof Warlikowski studied history, Romance languages and philosophy at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. In 1983 he left Poland and spent most of the ensuing years in Paris, where he attended a seminar on classical theatre at the École Pratique des Hautes Études and studied philosophy and French language and literature at the Sorbonne. In 1989 he returned to Poland to study at the Theatre Academy in Krakow.

He has a versatile body of work – from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, The Winter’s Tale and Hamlet; to Sophocles’ Electra and Euripides’ The Phoenicians and The Bacchae; to Verdi’s Don Carlos. He is best known for his staging of modern plays, including Franz Kafka’s The Trial and Bernard-Marie Koltès’ Roberto Zucco and Quai Ouest. His 2002 production of Sarah Kane’s Cleansed at the Festival d’Avignon and the Festival de Théâtre des Amériques in Montreal received wide acclaim. Among his most famous productions are also The Dybbuk after S. An-ski and Hanna Krall which was presented at BAM’s 2004 Next Wave Festival, and Hanoch Levin's Krum which was presented at BAM in 2007. Both of these productions premiered at TR Warszawa, the theatre he collaborated with from 1999 until 2007. In 2007 he returned to the Festival d’Avignon directing Tony Kushner’s Angels in America with TR Warszawa. Since 2008 he has been the Artistic Director of Nowy Teatr in Warsaw.

A separate field of Krzysztof Warlikowski’s work involves opera including collaborations with Warsaw's Teatr Wielki (Poland's National Opera) and the Paris National Opera.

He has for years been working with the same group of artists, including set designer Malgorzata Szczesniak and composer Pawel Mykietyn.

Krzysztof Warlikowski is a winner of numerous awards, including "Polityka" Weekly's Passport for 2002 "for not only his achievements of the last season, but above all for restoring belief in the artistic and ethical mission of theatre", Golden Yorick award of the Theatrum Gedanense Foundation for the best Shakespeare production (2003), Konrad Laurels and the Award of the French Theatre Critics' Union, both in 2003 for TR Warszawa’s production of Sarah Kane's Cleansed, judged to be the best foreign language production to be presented in France during the 2002/03 season. He was honored by the Theatre Critics' Section of the Polish branch of the International Theatre Institute for popularizing Polish theatrical culture abroad. In 2004 he received the French title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et de Lettres and the Diploma of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland for his distinguished service to Poland abroad. In 2006 he received the prestigious Meyerhold Award in Moscow, and in April 2008, the X Europe Prize “New Theatrical Realities” in Thessaloniki, Greece. In May 2008 New York’s Village Voice gave Krzysztof Warlikowski its Obie Award for the direction of Krum by Hanoch Levin, presented by TR Warszawa at BAM’s 25th Next Wave Festival.

In May 2009 his (A)pollonia, adaptation of ancient texts of Euripides, Aeschylus and contemporary Polish-Jewish writer, Hanna Krall, opended the activity of Nowy Teatr in Warsaw, and was then presented at numerous theatres and festivals abroad (Festival d’Avignon and Wiener Festwochen among others). February 2010 saw the premiere of his adaptation of Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams in Theatre de l’Odeon in Paris. In June 2010 his Verdi’s Macbeth was premiered at La Monnaie in Brussels.

Warlikowski recently realized his next production at Nowy Teatr in Warsaw – The End, based on Kafka’s Trial, Bernard-Marie Koltes’ Nickel Stuff and JM Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello.

The show

Programme

• by day
• by town
• by artist