May, 6th, 8,00 pm
Croatian House of Culture in Sušak
Teatr “Provisorium” and Kompania “Teatr”, Lublin, Poland

Witold Gombrowicz: “FERDYDURKE”

Directed by: Janusz Oprynski, Witold Mazurkiewicz

Actors: Jacek Brzezinski, Witold Mazurkievvicz, Jaroslaw Tomica , Michal Zgiet
Stage designer: Jerzy Rudzki
Composer: Borys Somerschaf

Witold Gombrowicz holds a prominent position in contemporary Polish literature, while his novel Ferdydurke has been translated into numerous languages of the world. Gombrowicz’s poetics, relying mainly on the grotesque, reflects a complex awareness of the world, its elements being those of grasping life as a conflict of two energies: that belonging to the physical, animalistic, biological, individual world and that of the collective, civilized universe… The pessimistic result of such conflicts determining man’s fate, the overall domination of the amorphous, that is, of the uniform, the impossibility of becoming unique and inimitable is the basis of ali of Gombrowicz’s work.

Hosting sponsor: Institut Otvoreno društvo Hrvatska. This visiting performance is being sponsored by The Open Society Institute, Croatia and The Battory Foundation, Warsaw

“There are two sources contributing to the exceptional quality of the Lublin theatre version of “Ferdydurke”. The first is its “Combrowicz-like thinking”(…), which is why this performance of “Ferdydurke” is not just a book “dressed up” for the stage.

The second source which makes this performance an extraordinary achievement is the acting. I would say it is “total” and based on an amazingly diverse range of the actors’ expertise.(…). Each sequence of the play is given with mastery and distinction…
Piatkowsky, Dziennik Wschodni

“Ferdydurke is performed with a rare sense of humour..
Combrowicz’s statement about a person being doomed to his own appearance, finds it’s theatrical antithesis in the performance: four actors, barely fitting into a school bench, fight a pitched battle not to get lost in a proliferating mass of limbs.

This brilliant adaptation of Combrowicz’s novel is one of the best shown over the last ten years.”
Pawlowski, Cazeta Wyborcza