SPARTACUS: Love in the Time of the Plague
Contemporary Theatre in Szczecin, Poland
Thursday
May 18th, 2023 | 8:00 p.m.
Reduta Theatre
Genre: Foreign production, Unisex
Runtime: 2 hours without interval
Czech surtitles
Immediately after the performance, we would like to invite the audience to a discussion with the performers and production team. The discussion will be conducted in the Mozart´s Hall in Reduta Theatre in Polish language with interpretation to Czech language.
SPARTACUS: Love in the Time of the Plague
Contemporary Theatre in Szczecin, Poland
Thursday
May 18th, 2023 | 8:00 p.m.
Reduta Theatre
Genre: Foreign production, Unisex
Runtime: 2 hours without interval
Czech surtitles
Immediately after the performance, we would like to invite the audience to a discussion with the performers and production team. The discussion will be conducted in the Mozart´s Hall in Reduta Theatre in Polish language with interpretation to Czech language.
Possibility to get a quantity festival discount -25%. Ticket discounts valid at the NdB can be applied to ticket purchases. The discount for pensioners is 30%. The discount for disabled persons and students is 50%.
Possibility to get a quantity festival discount -25%. Ticket discounts valid at the NdB can be applied to ticket purchases. The discount for pensioners is 30%. The discount for disabled persons and students is 50%.
This critical reflection of the Polish society, which takes for its ground the condition of adolescent psychiatry, leads to a redemptive dream of mutual tolerance. ‘We all together want to manifest that everybody has the right to love and self-determination, and that we all have an obligation to look after those who call for help and acceptation.’
Suicide is the leading cause of child deaths in Poland, more than cancer or road accidents. Nearly 70% of LGBTQ+ teenagers in Poland have suicidal thoughts. In 2020 and 2021, the public was shocked by a series of widely talked-about articles by Janusz Schwertner, telling stories of teenage patients and their parents embroiled in the youth psychiatric care system. It was these articles – expanded by our own research – that served as the point of departure for this play. Yet SPARTACUS: Love in the Time of the Plague is not just the tale of a particular group and a branch of medicine; it is also an attempt to look at how we care for one another in today’s Poland. The cast itself follows this line: the roles of teenager psychiatric patients are played by the oldest members of the Szczecin ensemble in order to emphasize the transgenerational nature of human fragility and vulnerability. The issues addressed by the play extend beyond homophobia, transphobia and the underfunded, understaffed, underequipped and malfunctioning system of psychiatric care. If we may first believe to watch a Polish variation on the One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, we are later brought to witness a surprising turnabout: as if the theatre itself endeavoured to put together that shattered world…
The performance is inspired by Janusz Schwertner report, documentary materials, and interviews with psychiatric patients, their parents and psychiatrists across Poland.
‘You will be unable to get Spartacus out of your head. You can’t stop thinking about this performance, you need to talk about it, and when you do, you always end up saying: You must see it!’
Magda Piekarska, Notatnik Teatralny
‘In my eyes, the staging of Spartacus is a groundbreaking achievement.’
Zofia Kowalska, Teatr dla wszystkich
‘It’s a performance that will never leave you unconcerned.’
Witold Mrozek, Gazeta Wyborcza
Jakub Skrzywanek (b. 1992) ranges among the most distinctive personalities of the young generation of Polish stage directors. He is a graduate from the Faculty of Drama Direction at the Academy of Theatre Arts in Cracow, the Faculty of Philology at the University of Wrocław, and the DOKPRO course at the Wajda Master School. On a permanent basis, Skrzywanek collaborates with Teatr Polski in Poznan and Teatr Powszechny in Warsaw. The latter one put on his productions Mein Kampf (2019), thematizing the phenomenon of the Nazi manifesto, and Immoral Stories (2021), inquiring into the trial against Roman Polanski, a French-Polish film director convicted of rape. Constantly addressing controversial social issues, Skrzywanek often works abroad. In the Uzbekistan’s capital Tashkent, he put on stage Underground Girls (2021) relating the status of Afghan women under Taliban rule and the emancipation of women in Islamic regions. Since 2022, Jakub Skrzywanek has worked as the artistic director of the Contemporary Theatre in Sczecin. The jury of the 2022 edition of the Katowice Interpretation Festival of Directing Art unanimously awarded him the 1st prize for The Death of John Paul II. In January 2023, he received the prestigious Polish award Polityka Passport.
The TWB Festival presents two productions directed by Jakub Skrzywanek: SPARTACUS. Love in the Time of the Plague and The Death of John Paul II, the latter being a reflection on the last journey of a well-known figure, and not only…
Direction: Jakub Skrzywanek
Play script: Weronika Murek and Jakub Skrzywanek
Dramaturgy: Weronika Murek
Set design: Daniel Rycharski
Costume design: Natalia Mleczak
Music: Karol Nepelski
Light direction: Aleksandr Prowaliński
Choreography: Agnieszka Kryst
Video: Krzysztof Kuźnicki and Jakub Skrzywanek
Cast: Maria Dąbrowska, Adrianna Janowska-Moniuszko, Anna Januszewska, Krystyna Maksymowicz, Ewa Sobczak, Helena Urbańska, Beata Zygarlicka, Arkadiusz Buszko, Robert Gondek, Adam Kuzycz-Berezowski, Michał Lewandowski, Maciej Litkowski, Wiesław Orłowski, Przemysław Walich
Violin: Piotr Wicenciak / Maria Kanarek