PLACE: Witkacy New Theater in Slupsk.
TYPE OF PROJECT: theatrical performance
FUNCTION: director
OTHER CREATORS:
Text: Olga Zukowicz
Video: Tomasz Schaefer
Set design: Katarzyna Sobolewska
Music: Wojciech Dlugosz
Cast: Monika Bubniak, Claudia Kucharski, Igor Chmielnik, Wojciech Marcinkowski
PREMIERE : March 12, 2021
DESCRIPTION OF THE SHOW:
The guest of the TV show „Finde mich” is Adela Sparr – a woman who survived the war when she was a little girl. She remembers little: the fire of Slupsk, the transit camp on Deotymy Street, the gallows on Hitlerstrasse (today Wojska Polskiego) and the taste of gherkins. She knows little about her father and mother. The program is supposed to help her reconstruct her own childhood. It turns out that her dad’s mementos are marked with swastikas, and the past of both parents hides many secrets….The play reveals the wartime history of Slupsk in an interactive way. The audience learns about the past of streets and squares known to them by other names and confronts the events of the year 45. Each viewer gets a remote control: it is he who personally decides the fate of the heroine. Each person in the audience makes 10 decisions, the result of which is displayed during the action and affects the shape of the performance. Depending on the audience’s choices, the performance can last from an hour to almost two.
EXCERPTS FROM REVIEWS:
Julia Mark clearly formulates the essence of the heroine’s fate, and also clearly points out the universalism of the story – set in the space-time of (peri-)wartime Slupsk, but not inextricably tied to it. Thus constructed, the performance is shaped (…) coherent in content and semantically, very interesting visually. Julia Mark very skillfully reaches here for tools and ideas straight from horror cinema, building with their help a space steeped in mystery and deep trauma.
Anna Jazgarska
The efforts to make guest appearances were great. The impression left by the production was even greater.Director Julia Mark stages Adela’s painful encounter with her own past in a multi-layered and oppressive manner. The spectrum of artistic means she uses is wide: at one time these are horror-filled, surreal scenes, at another time abstract pantomimic actions saturated with violence. The four-member ensemble intensely plays and relives their roles. Stolp. Women’s Day. is a piece that lingers in the memory for a long time.
Thomas Wirth, Die Fränkische Landeszeitung after the New Theater’s show in Ansbach, Germany