Shocking stories of Mariupol residents at Teatr w Blokowisko. Reading will return in the fall

Agata Olszewska: What exactly is Blokowisko Theater?

Tomasz Kaczorowski, director of Teatr w Blokowisko, director, playwright: – Teatr w Blokowisko is a series that has been operating for more than a dozen years within the framework of the cultural archipelago of Gdańsk Plama na Zaspa. It mainly presents independent and non-event events, including small cast performances, which attract the interest of a large audience. At the beginning, within the framework of this series, it was especially its coordinator, Marek Brand, who sometimes came back to us with new projects. We are a professional scene operating within the institution. We have a very small intimate space, perfectly suited to this type of initiative.

Cultural institutions have never had it easy, especially small ones, and in recent years it has been even more difficult… Has the pandemic affected the activities of Teatr w Blokowisko?

– There was a pandemic when the theater in Blokowisko was a bit weaker for a while. For one simple reason – organizational chaos on the part of the government prevented us from effectively planning the directory to bring in quality articles from Tri-City and all over Poland and not cancel it at the last minute , in case a lock has been entered. I have been curating this series since April and I am fighting very hard for this place to find viewers before the pandemic, but also to acquire new ones. We also plan to play during school hours for secondary school children: October 25 and November 22 – this will be our new premiere of “Smutek & Melancholia” and November 30 – “Migrants” prepared by Małgorzata Polakowska and the Feeria association. We invite teachers with organized classes and groups to book now.

What are your ideas for this?

– First of all, we care about three goals, and these are the ones we are targeting. The first is to activate the local community, that is, the inhabitants of Zaspa. First of all, we want to provide them with quality art, so that, being next door, in the block next door, they want to come to us. We particularly want to reach young people.

We also want to be an initiative that unites and initiates a meeting of the academic community of the Tri-City – I mean mainly the University of Gdańsk and the Department of Theater and Performance Drama of the Institute of Polish Philology , I also initiated contact with the Academy of Music in Gdańsk. I hope that these collaborations will bear fruit in the months to come and that the students who now come to us as spectators will be the co-creators of the character of this place.

And third: I also want to meet the artistic community of the Tri-City. We will try to make it an interdisciplinary place, at the frontier of the arts – from performative concerts, through monodramas, performative readings and various small forms.

On October 23, at Teatr w Blokowisko, we will see our own premiere: “Sadness & Melancholy” directed by Tomasz Kaczorowski. This is a staging of a play by famous German playwright Bonn Park, based on the true story of the last Galapagos elephant tortoise – the famous loner George

photo: Grzegorz Mehring / www.gdansk.pl

The cooperation you have undertaken as curator of the Blokowisko Theater does not only apply to universities, but also goes beyond the Tri-City – you also invite theaters and artists from Poland.

– Yes. The first initiative was to establish cooperation with the Theater Academy in Warsaw – a branch in Białystok, that is, the former department of puppet art. In April, I was able to invite Marek Idzikowski, the award-winning piece “Odmęt”, which won, among other things, the first prize at the Young Directing Forum in Krakow. On October 10, we showed the play “Stand Up” – a bold review by Aleksandra Gosławska, who talks about her experience as an actress entering the profession.

On November 14, we will revisit Białystok’s play – “Lungs”, an examination performance of three young actors under the direction of Łukasz Lewandowski, actor of the Warsaw Drama Theater. This performance is based on a text by English playwright Duncan Macmillan. It tells of fears, the collapse of the world we know, but also of love.

I wanted to bring to the Tri-Cité shows that are not available on local stages, and show the diplomas and exams of the student actor-puppeteers. There is no adult entertainment theater in the Tri-City, there is only one puppet theater in Gdańsk – the Miniatura Theater – whose repertoire is mainly aimed at young audiences. As Blokowisko Theater we want to fill this gap.

What is so interesting and precious about the theater of an animated form?

– As a director, I see great opportunities in him, much greater than in dramatic theatre. If we imagine how to show, for example, death, then in a dramatic theater there will always be some kind of lie – the actor (fortunately) will not really die. The means of the theater of the object, which the animator animates, allow everything to be acted out. Animated Form Theater gives us the tools to think about, for example, science fiction in theater – we can drive puppets or forms through any world we want, including the cosmos. It also allows you to create a completely new world. It is therefore a theater with great potential, unfortunately with a patch of children’s theater. It is for anyone with an open mind, curiosity, imagination and a sense of humor. Exactly the same is needed in dramatic theater.

This season, besides impresario events, Teatr w Blokowisko also hosts its own productions. It’s new.

– Yes, for the first time in many years Teatr w Blokowisko is starting to produce its shows. On September 25, we had the premiere of our first production: “Hop into the Space”, performances for children from 3 years old and their relatives, prepared by the actress – Zuzanna Łuczak-Wiśniewska. The show was so popular that it will surely return to our stage in November and December, and it may also visit other institutions of the Gdańsk cultural archipelago.

Currently, we are just before the premiere of the new production for young people and adults – on October 23, I cordially invite you to “Sorrow & Melancholy” directed by me. Under the pretext of the story of the last Galapagos elephant tortoise, the famous lonely George, it addresses the issue of mental health, death and the fear of loneliness. I believe that today it is one of the most necessary subjects that the theater should deal with. I hope this performance will become a pretext to discuss emotions and how to deal with pressure and stimuli in today’s world.

The show is performed by Mikołaj Bańdo – theater, serial and film actor, graduated from the Academy of Theater Arts in Krakow – Wrocław branch

photo: Grzegorz Mehring / www.gdansk.pl

What else awaits us in October and November at Teatr w Blokowisko?

– Later this month, on October 17, we will see our own production again, which we had the opportunity to present in August at the Plama and the Sopot Boto Theater – performative reading “… my death is a matter of time …”, with actress Marta Kalmus. These are testimonies of Ukrainian women and Ukrainians from a war-torn country, collected and compiled by Marina Yurchenko, a young girl who fled this city for Gdańsk the day before the Mariupol Drama Theater was bombed. It is a text that cannot be ignored, it is shocking. At both shows, neither the audience nor the actress hid great emotion.

On November 21 and 22, “Smutek & Melancholia” will be back. On November 25, we will present the reading “Delta Venus” by and directed by Paulina Eryka Masa, whose project was awarded the cultural scholarship of the city of Gdańsk. On November 28, renowned playwright and director Mariusz Babicki will visit Plama with his monodrama “(Not) The Suffering of Young Werther”, starring James Malcolm. It will be a theatrical and musical reinterpretation of the classics, to which we invite young people, adults and seniors. And on November 30, Małgorzata Polakowska will prepare her premiere. It will be a show in the form of a forum theater and will address the issue of migrants living among us.

Along the way, we invite you to many other events. We are already preparing the directory for December – details will be announced soon. It will certainly be interesting.

“The Tide” – premiere of the Miniatura Theater for children from 6 months. Already on Saturday