The International Festival of Pleasant and Unpleasant Plays has begun its theatrical season. The 29th Festival, one of the most important theatre events in Poland, was launched in Łódź. The Teatr Powszechny in Łódź will host performances by Krystyna Janda, Anna Wieczur, Jan Klata, Katarzyna Szyngiera, Piotr Cieplak, Maja Kleczewska, Jakub Skrzywanek and Krystian Lupa.
As always, the festival will be a celebration of important and diverse theatre. The theme of this year’s event proposed by Ewa Pilawska is ‘War. Woman. Theatre’. For the inauguration, the audience watched Krystyna Janda’s latest play, ‘My Way’, which she created for her 70th birthday. This was the first showing of the play outside the Polonia Theatre.
“I dedicate this Festival to a woman – Krystyna Janda, an outstanding artist who needs no introduction. She is a master in theatre hypnotising the audience, which we have experienced many times during the Festival. She has enjoyed great success for several decades and has been awarded all over the world. She is gifted with great talent, but also with detachment and a sense of humour, which is a rarity”, says artistic director and Festival creator Ewa Pilawska.
The following weekend, audiences will twice see the rap hit about the path to a free Poland – ‘1989’, directed by Katarzyna Szyngiera. In the performance, the audience is transported back to the times of the declining communist Poland by watching the Wałęsa and Frasyniuk couples on stage. The contemporary musical leaves us with a bitter question: what is left of the joy of June 1989 today?
At the Festival, audiences will also see the play ‘Spartacus. Love in times of pestilence’ from the Contemporary Theatre in Szczecin. The creators tackle the problem of suicide, which is becoming increasingly common among teenagers.
The festival will conclude with two Master Shows of Thomas Bernhard’s ‘Siblings’, directed by Krystian Lupa. In 2023, the show ‘Siblings’ returns to Lodz, almost two decades after the first Lodz screening of the play.
Arkadiusz Słomczyński