Joanna Zemanek

[...] one cannot be satisfied with the role of an unwitting performer of existential activities. And inself-defence,
one must pursue the meaning of everyday life as if it were a lurking criminal.

We are going to philosophise. Though perhaps philosophising may seem like the wrong term in this case, because it is associated with the mind, and here it's about philosophising with the body, philosophising about what we experience, and how we experience it as carnal beings. As beings in female bodies. Philosophising is mostly associated with the "heights" of the human (meaning: male) intellect, and to many it seems the opposite of a daily routine filled with trivial activities. We, on the other hand, wish to philosophise about the ordinary, the banal, the trivial, about the cleaning up, the busyness, the puttering around and tending to everything. About the daily labour that is the essence of our existence. This is where we’ll be searching for the meaning and properties of our human-female existence. In the existential reality that takes the form of a washcloth, a cherry fruit or a piece of meat.

Flesh and blood, symbols of life and death, of what is natural and sacred. But whose flesh and blood? For a very long time, a woman's body did not belong solely to her. Subjected to patriarchal control, moral and religious prohibitions and commands, treated as a commodity by the capitalist system, pushed into the realm of taboo, it was both an object of male desire and female shame. The female blood belonged to a different category than the blood oozing from the wound of a male hero. It is ‘unclean’ blood, which has even been deprived of its colour, replaced by blue in the ads. The experiences of half of humanity, both ordinary and those particularly difficult, are still too often considered unworthy of disclosure, silenced and hidden. The women in the play ‘Flesh and Blood’, directed by Iwona Kempa, will speak about what is inappropriate to talk about, what is, at best, whispered about. They will talk about the experiences of women's bodies and women's blood from a female perspective.