Breaking free from the self—the life of certain female philosopher
The play opens with a peculiar monologue by the eponymous protagonist: “Today, I will guide you through the topography of Sarah Kofman”s memory. You don’t know who she is. That’s okay. She herself tried to find out throughout her entire life. She was a French philosopher from the deconstructionist circle, with an impressive body of interdisciplinary work in philosophy, art, psychoanalysis, literature, and feminism. Please do not scroll through Wikipedia. There is nothing there. She claimed that her biography was her bibliography. And yet, after many years, she decided to recount the story of her childhood, which was split between two streets and two mothers. Between rue Ordener and rue Labat. It turns out that this was the last thing she wrote, perhaps her own obituary.” A perfect self-presentation, epitaph or prologue to a performance.
However, it would be wrong to pigeonhole Katarzyna Kalwat’s play as a biography, because she uses Kofman’s story for a slightly different purpose. Kalwat begins with her protagonist’s autobiography—a story that the French philosopher naturally authorised, which matters when telling a whole life through a mere three-year span—to examine what it means for a person to consciously and openly acknowledge their identity, whether defined by class, family, religion, nationality, or language.
This broadly defined set of issues is one of the favourite areas in Western culture. Katarzyna Kalwat has been dealing with it for years, to mention just the excellent performance “Staff Only”. In “Kofman”, the theme is intertwined with French culture, which appears to be particularly dear to her. This can be seen through the authors whose works Kalwat has recently adapted for the stage: Annie Ernaux, Didier Eribon, and Georges Perec. Those with a slightly better memory will surely recall the play that was a turning point in her outstanding career—“Holzwege”, produced at TR Warszawa in 2016. Kalwat’s fascination with Tomasz Sikorski, one of the most important avant-garde composers of the 20th century, proves her other great love—music, which often plays a significant role in her performances.
“This is not a play about Derrida. It is a portrait of the brilliant mind of a female philosopher, forgotten amidst a history of philosophy dominated by male perspective. Yet, that’s only part of the story. It is also an exploration of the struggle to break free from identity molds forged as survival mechanisms in a culturally alien world.
From the very beginning, Kofman’s femininity and Jewishness shape her existence—both as a burden and a source of strength. Her relentless quest for recognition becomes a self-creative endeavour, in which she, reflecting on her father’s memory, the figures of two mothers, and her intellectual companions, fashions herself to belong.
Adopting Sartre’s mask of mauvaise foi, she embarks on a path of freedom that aligns only partially with her true self and formative experiences. This is why her philosophical essays on Freud and Nietzsche remain meditations on how to conceal the self within philosophical discourse, how to cloak in words the unspeakable trauma of uprooting”. (Małgorzata Budzowska, “Czas Kultury”)
About the Theatre:
The International Centre for Culture New Theatre is a municipal cultural institution, founded in 2008 and officially opened in 2016. It is located in a renovated workshop hall of the former Municipal Waste Management base in Warsaw.
Nowy Teatr grew out of the work of Krzysztof Warlikowski, who radically opened theatre art to socially important, often controversial topics as well as formal experiments. The institution produces and presents exploratory theatre, both Polish and international, creating a space for dialogue and collaboration, a new artistic situation, and a free field of activity for invited artists.
Nowy Teatr aims to be a place for artistic expansion of the battlefield, boldly posing questions about human nature and condition, as well as the shape of the community we create.
About the Director:
Katarzyna Kalwat is a graduate of the Directing Department at the Theatre Academy in Warsaw and the Faculty of Psychology at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Her primary interests focus on identity and strategies of self-creation. In her work, she explores the performative dimension of language, addressing the act of writing as an act of public disclosure, using theatre as a medium to investigate the hidden potential of text.
Since 2016, she has been working on some of Poland’s most prestigious stages, including TR Warszawa, Nowy Teatr in Warsaw, the National Old Theatre in Kraków, Teatr Łaźnia Nowa in Kraków, and one of her favorite venues, the Wrocław Contemporary Theatre.
She has received numerous awards, including the O!Lśnienia Award, the main prize at the National Competition for the Staging of Polish Contemporary Drama, the second prize at the National Festival of Directing Art “Interpretations” in Katowice, and the 2023 Wrocław Artistic Award.
Katarzyna Kalwat has also been awarded scholarships from the French Government, the French Institute, and the Cité internationale des arts Foundation in Paris.
