(Zabawa)

Directed by:
team-work

Cooperation:
Agnieszka Warchulska, Piotr Ziniewicz

Art protection:
Jaroslaw Gajewski

"The play by Mrozek - similarly to all the works of the author, derives from Polish realities, exquisitely known in Poland - is aiming to generalize problems of all times (..). In “Zabawa” three farm-hands try to spend free time in peculiar way - they create some kind of holidays in their dreams. Unfortunately, they cannot find the announced entertainment and they haven’t got enough inventiveness for creation of such an entertainment by themselves. However, their determination is so strong that two of them decide to sacrifice the third one. They want him to sacrifice his life for the sake of their common idea (entertainment). In this case a funeral will be possible and a funeral banquet - sense of celebration and holiday.
Maybe it is not a typical entertainment. but something real will occur at least.”

“The Mrozek’s dialogues sound freshly and reliably and the rate of action is high all the time. Even during the most grotesque situations one can see no excessive play of actors nor inclination for solo presentation. The musical interval performed by the trio of actors (fiddle, accordion and percussion) should be highly appreciated.”

Janusz R. Kowalczyk - RZECZPOSPOLITA

“(...) this one-act play is the masterpiece of a dramatic construction (...). Satire is rather beside the point, but some philosophical problems appear."

“The power of the performance (...) consists not so much in the execution as in the interpretation of Mrozek’s play, which is very serious and very mature. It is a rare theatre in our times, it means something. It refers to all of us."

Wojciech Majcherek - TEATR

“Zabawa” (...) combines the perfect theatrical art of the group with unpretentiousness of the Stage adaptation.
(...) All the actors are tuning to the same ironical Mrozek’s melody, giving to it a modern tone. They also know how to find the accurate balance of gags and to depict the deeper sense of the play, which is giving Mrozek’s perverse answer to “Wesele” (“Wedding” by S. Wyspianski). (...) They use few simplest requisites for that: a table, an empty bottle and a box for accordion which plays part of a coffin”.

Roman Pawlowski - GAZETA WYBORCZA

“I should say that till now nobody found such unusual rendition of the more than thirty years old one-act play.
Entertainment appears to the heroes as a synonym of the real life, deprived them by an unknown sentence. When thay arrange their own substitute of the real life, it can contain wedding, funeral, hate, dreams and competition...”

Jacek Sieradzki - POLITYKA

Slawomir Mrozek

Mrozek is a playwright, satirist and master of the short story who was born in Borzecin in 1930 and has lived in Paris, the USA, Germany and Mexico. Since 1997, he has published cartoons and columns in Gazeta Wyborcza, the largest Polish daily newspaper. He is probably the Polish playwright whose works are staged most often both in Poland and abroad, and for years he has been, along with Stanislaw Lem, the most popular writer in Poland. His work has been translated into and staged in more than a dozen languages.

Mrozek began publishing his cartoons in 1950 and has regularly published collections of cartoons since 1953. The cartoons and his satirical short stories brought him early and unusual fame and a unique place in contemporary Polish letters. He sought out and satirized both the absurdities of life under communism, and the banal post-romantic stereotypes of the Polish imagination. He has become a part of the Polish language: particularly nonsensical everyday situations are described as "straight out of Mrozek". People make argumentative points on the basis of his satires. Mrozek's debut as a playwright came in 1956 with The Police, which depicted the central role of the "police" - including the secret police - in a totalitarian state. In order to convince both the public and their superiors that they are necessary, Mrozek's police invent an opposition movement in order to justify their own existence. Mrozek has produced one success after another. He exploits the grotesque, absurd exaggeration, satire, and parody with an unerring sense of the comic. At the same time, he peppers his works with themes that turn them into parables, morality tales, or philosophical experiments. They dissect both the oppressive reality of a semi-totalitarian state like communist Poland and the interhuman relations and games that people play, usually with the aim of manipulating others. As one critic has stated, Mrozek specializes in the conflict among three groups: the intellectuals, who are in fact mere puppets; the ideologues who consciously shape social reality; and the unthinking, simple "slobs" who rely on brute force alone. Usually, the intellectual ends up falling victim to the slob, who is merely fulfilling the wishes of the ideologue.

I have indeed laughed in all sorts of ways, out loud and silently, biologically and intellectually, but the laughter has never penetrated the center of my being. I belong to the generation for which laughter was always spiced with irony, bitterness or despair. Ordinary laughter, laughter for the sake of laughing, cheerful and untroubled, amusing puns - that strikes us as somewhat old-fashioned and enviable.

[from www.polska2000.pl]