Dialog Festival
Mariage Blanc
author: Tadeusz Różewicz, set and costume design: Andrzej Witkowski, music: Piotr Dziubek, music adaptation: Krystyna Meissner, stage movement: Maćko Prusak, premiere: September 2010
Cast: Katarzyna Bednarz, Katarzyna Z. Michalska, Piotr Łukaszczyk, Elżbieta Golińska, Ewelina Paszke–Lowitzsch, Jerzy Senator / Tadeusz Ratuszniak, Jacek Piątkowski (guest appearance), Anna Błaut / Beata Rakowska, Tadeusz Ratuszniak / Mieszko Barglik (guest appearance), Mieszko Barglik (guest appearance), Michał Dudziński (guest appearance) and Barbara Chodorowicz, Aleksandra Dytko (Theatre School), Dorota Kozikowska, Jolanta Solarz (Theatre School), Małgorzata Zagrodzka
“Różewicz shows that sexuality can deform both the man and the woman. His form is by no means shallow; he justifies and illustrates this with many causes. Our tradition, family life, religion. I call it a straitjacket from which one cannot break free. The Catholic Church has surrounded the body with dictates, prohibitions and sin. I’m deeply sorry for the young people who either transgress these prohibitions or become subordinated to them”
Krystyna Meissner
Mariage Blanc (1973) is a play about the terror of language and gender, about the impossibility of escaping the roles imposed on us by society or by our own body. It is also a play about a search for freedom, and eagerness to be original and free in expressing oneself. But, above all, it is an exceptionally insightful, invariably up-to-date, bitter and portrayal of the erotic condition of Poles.
Tadeusz Różewicz’s narrative sparkles with quotations and paraphrases; in each of the 13 scenes, we look at one family from a slightly different perspective, as if this were a kaleidoscope. We watch a brilliant representation of all the possible forms that desire, fears and frustrations, traumas and complexes, prejudice and stereotype can take. The story of Bianka, a seemingly ordinary pubescent girl who is about to get married, becomes a treatise on the relationships between men and women, on the essence of being with another human being.
“This is a comedy about hypocrisy eating away at us today. About the fact that by agreeing to it and joining the game, we’re laying a trap for ourselves. A piece for those who will see on stage something more than a series of wonderfully well composed images. They will appreciate the fine, consistent acting, because Mariage Blanc is yet another evidence of the fact that the company has been going through an exceptional time recently.”
Jacek Wakar, Przekrój
Wrocławski Teatr Współczesny is one of the most important theatre companies in Poland, led for 12 years by Krystyna Meissner. Founded as a private venture shortly after WWII in the then completely ruined Wrocław, the theatre quickly won nationwide acclaim, thanks to which its collaborators included such distinguished playwrights as Helmut Kajzar and Tadeusz Różewicz, as well as the greatest Polish directors, such as Jerzy Jarocki or Józef Szajna.
Today Teatr Współczesny is regarded as one of the most thought-provoking and most interesting theatre companies in Poland. It has won the hearts of spectators and critics with its clearly defined repertoire, serious approach to its audiences and, first of all, excellent choice of directors. Each new production involves well-known and established artists as well as representatives of younger generations and debutants. Risky, ground-breaking productions now considered “classics” of contemporary Polish theatre (Sarah Kane’s Cleansed directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski or Transfer directed by Jan Klata) are still triumphantly received all over the world. Since 2001, every two years, the theatre has been holding the DIALOG-WROCŁAW International Theatre Festival, the most important international theatre festival in Poland.