PREMIERE: 28.02.2020
TIME: 75 MIN

It’s a directing debut of Wojciech Rodak – a student of Akademia Sztuk Teatralnych in Kraków. The show constitutes an attempt of describing a person and work of our Theatre patron – JERZY SZANIAWSKI. A young director with his team have a closer look at the literary output of Jerzy Szaniawski at the moment of the patron’s 50th death anniversary.

THE SAILOR takes us in the middle of the preparations for a celebration of the captain Nut heroic death anniversary in a seaside town. The ceremony anticipation gets unexpectedly broken by a sudden appearance of a young explorer, who wants to dispel the myth of a heroic captain and to reveal the truth about his life.

On the 50th Theatre’s patron death anniversary the creators, as well as THE SAILOR’s characters, face a dilemma of creating another statue – in the literal and metaphorical sense. The show inspired by a Szaniawski’s text concentrates on the monument’s idea. The authors ask questions, still not enough present in a public dialogue: what kind of a monuments do we need today? Do we still need this way of commemoration at all? What happened with our memory and why was it washed out by a history?

– It’s interesting how Szaniawski brings up the subject of commemoration in a public space in 1925. He develops the topic in a quite innovative way and at the same time talks about a society and what role art plays in it – says Wojtek Rodak, the director.

The show, full of activities from the area of contemporary art, tells about current forms of commemorating, and wider, about a control over the public space. Artists, together with the audience, try to answer the question what kind of monuments are able to survive a catastrophe looming on the horizon.