Creators: neTTheatre, Łaźnia Nowa Theatre, CHOREA Theatre
Direction, script, visuals: Paweł Passini
Music: Paweł Passini, Rafał Rękosiewicz
Light: Tomasz Krukowski
Cast:
Great Pole in the state of progressing mineralisation – Maciej Wyczański
National orphans: Helenka - Iga Załęczna, Staś - Dominika Jarosz, Teodor - Barbara Songin, Mieciu - Katarzyna Tadeusz
Master of Funeral Ceremonies - Rafał Rękosiewicz
Everyman - Paweł Passini
Internauts - in the hall and on the Net
Children - very local and modern
Premiere: 28.11.2007, Łaźnia Nowa Theatre, Krakow
The script of Requiem is based on, among others, the fragments of Stanisław Wyspiański’s works which have not been staged before. These works have been subject to numerous reinterpretations resulting in deformation, new formatting and the loss of their primary context, and now they come back only in the form of loose fragments, looming in our collective imagination. We use these fragments to reconstruct the image of Wyspiański in the moment of his physical death and, at the same time, his birth in ‘the theatre of keepsakes’. However, our attention is not focused on Wyspiański himself but on his children. Helenka, Staś, Teodor and Mieciu become the main characters of the performance. They turn back time by eating worms. They play with their father and call back their happiest moments… The father would easily leave his Outstanding Friends when the time of the day which he always reserved for children came. The sacred time of fun and rest. Thanks to these hours spent on painting together, telling fairy tales and other wonderful activities, the pantheon of Our National Heritage was enriched with a child’s face full of mysteries and from then on we have been able to recognize such a child in each of us. A double tragedy is what the heroes of the images received ‘in requital’. It is one of the most shameful and outrageous acts of ingratitude. A day after Wyspiański’s death, an expedition set off to his family home in Węgrzce in order to take away as many things he left as possible. Moreover, in order to ensure proper education of the bard’s offspring, caring representatives of the National Culture took them away from their Mother (of peasant origins), thus making them full orphans. None of them ever came to terms with this tragedy. Two sons ended up in mental asylums (Staszek spent 30 years there!), Helenka was sent to a Swiss convent school where she constantly prayed to… come back to Węgrzce.
Death. memory, art and life. The fourth bard and the Cracow’s open secret. During the interlude, actor Maciej Wyczański tells us about his work on the Wyspiański’s role, and the internauts constantly create a live chat, displayed on the cottage walls, about what they see.
Paweł Passini
Requiem is a multimedia performance. It is the first neTTheatre performance broadcast live on the Internet with the participation of 16 thousand Internauts from all over the world. It was nominated to the Gwarancja Kultury (Guarantee of Culture) award (category: theatre 2007), got an award in XIV Konkurs na Wystawienie Polskiej Sztuki Współczesnej (the 33rd Contest for Staging a Modern Polish Play).
