Maria Mordarska

And what if Poland plays the leading role in a horror story? Cast according to conditions. And not in just one episode, but in multiple seasons spanning centuries? What if the action takes place mainly in a cemetery, where behind every tombstone lurks a starving ghost – the soul of a national (anti)hero, crying out for penance and absolution? What if going down to the basement gives you goosebumps, because you never know what you'll come across, what – carefully hidden – will come to the surface and ruin the whole house? What if a few digs with a shovel can summon ghosts of the past that we will never be able to get rid of? That will stay with us, imposing their narrative and their aesthetics? What if this prevents us from noticing what is really important? Even if it lands right in front of our eyes. What if everything is just theatre?

‘Polish Horror Story’ is a nostalgic and liberating theatre piece written in the convention of the horror genre. A grotesque journey through the landscape of the Vistula River, where ‘you stumble upon a grave at every step’, where laughter and tears, absurdity and pompous solemnity merge into a unique elixir that we recognise at the first note. It is a story about a country engaged in a constant struggle between essence and costume.

What drives people to renounce themselves – their body, language, species? Where does the need to disappear stem from – not solely as a gesture of refusal, but also as despair that finds no other form of expression? ‘The Vegetarian’ by the Nobel Prize winner Han Kang is a story about a rebel whose rebellion does not take on the form of a loud cry, but plays out in silence and understatement. By withdrawing from social, family and carnal life, the protagonist strives to completely negate her species affiliation. She yearns to become a tree. Her attempt to transform herself into a plant becomes a form of resistance against violence, gender, language and human desires.

Following the three-part structure of the novel, the creators draw on different languages – of movement, image and video. As the protagonist increasingly alienates herself from the world, language also disintegrates. Words give way to images and movement. Together with playwright Joanna Bednarczyk, painter Krzysztof Meżyk, choreographer Anna Obszańska and a company of actors, Paweł Miśkiewicz attempts to explore the attitude of radical refusal – a refusal which, unlike the passive ‘I'd rather not’ of Bartleby, the Scrivener, becomes an active gesture of opposition to the violence of the world, an attempt to liberate oneself from its oppressive structures – even at the cost of self-annihilation. Is silence a form of protest? Is disappearance a political gesture? Can species transformation be a form of salvation from the hell of anthropocentrism?

Central European political fiction. A mixture of Polish dramatism and Czech humour in the service of combating fears of World War III. Ukraine and the Baltic states have been conquered. Hungary and Slovakia have voluntarily joined Russia. The Austrians are quietly rooting for Putin, and the whole of Western Europe is keeping their fingers crossed for us without providing any tangible support. Only the Poles and Czechs remain on the battlefield. In this situation, the governments of both countries decide to unite their nations. A task force of intellectuals and influencers is formed to convince the Czechs and Poles that they are not only allies, but in fact constitute one ancient Slavic nation.

Can this work? Will the Polish-Czech Union save Europe?