Dialog Festival

Judith

author: Friedrich Hebbel, translation: Jacek St. Buras,  dramaturgical collaboration: Anna Czerniawska, Johanna Hoehmann, set design: Mascha Mazur, music: Dominik Strycharski, costume design: Julia Kornacka, stage movement: Maćko Prusak, lighting design: Andreas Fuchs, assistant director: Przemysław Walich,  premiere: January 2011

cast:  Maria Dąbrowska, Marta Malikowska-Szymkiewicz, Arkadiusz Buszko, Marian Dworakowski, Robert Gondek, Adam Kuzycz-Berezowski, Wiesław Orłowski, Konrad Pawicki, Jacek Piątkowski, Wojciech Sandach, Przemysław Walich, Edyta Moroz

 

“Judith and Holofernes are, in fact, two very lonely people, the only people that could make each other happy. Hebbel is a precursor of modern thinking about theatre. It’s a very relevant text today; despite its heavy subject, it’s full of wit, humour and very distinctive characters.”

Klemm

“Learn to respect women” are the last words Holofernes hears from Judith before he loses his head completely. In Klemm’s staging, the beautiful widow uses a small axe for the purpose. This tool is better tested and more widely available than an Assyrian sword. The famous Old Testament story begins with the revenge of King Nebuchadbezzar on the people of Israel for refusing to join him in the conquest of the Median kingdom. The Assyrian ruler sends the cruel Holofernes to conquer the Jews. He lays siege to Bethulia, which is turned into a fortress. In order to save not only her city but the whole country as well, a young widow, Judith, goes to the enemy camp, arouses the Assyrian general’s passion and kills him as he sleeps after a boozy supper. A beautiful woman with a severed male head and a sword – this is the image usually brought to mind by the name of the biblical heroine. Klemm transfers the whole story to the world of the future, to some desert land into which – after yet another environmental disaster – any fragment of the Earth can be transformed.

“The Szczecin Judith is the best production of the season to date; humans are stripped to raw flesh and do not hide behind any ideology or religion.”  

Łukasz Drewniak, Przekrój

Teatr Współczesny in Szczecin is known as one of the most important theatres in Poland, mainly thanks to its daring repertoire experiments, based largely on the presentations of the latest plays by foreign and Polish artists. The current artistic director, Anna Augustynowicz, is regarded as one of the most brilliant Polish theatre directors. Many of her productions in Szczecin have achieved cult status. The theatre has been regularly collaborating with the young generations of directors, whose daring stagings make up its repertoire. These include Natalia Korczakowska’s Pelican or Farewell to Meat, Klemm’s Judith and A Piece on the Mother and Motherland directed by Marcin Libera.