Balladyna
- Author: Juliusz Słowacki
- Director: Paweł Świątek
- Stage design, costumes: Marcin Chlanda
- Lighting direction: Marcin Chlanda
- Music director: Dominik Strycharski
- Director's assistant: Gosia Jakubowska Raczkowska
- Assistant set designer: Katarzyna Sobolewska
- Animation: Olga Balowska
- Stage manager: Bartłomiej Oskarbski
- Producer: Bożena Sowa
- The MOS Stage
- Premiere: 07.01.2021
Is the fight for rightful ideas worth murder?
Juliusz Słowacki's ‘Balladyna’ is a story about taking power in the face of the end of the world. A world in which it is too late to establish a new order. It is also a story about the proximity of the world of nature, which nowadays claims its initial rights more forcefully than ever before. Finally, it is a story about a world of women that has taken hold in an era in which it is too late for everything.
Director’s words
While reading Słowacki's ‘Balladyna’ together with the actors, we pose the question: why is it that wrong people come to power? What do people who crave power have in them that they achieve it regardless of any objective criteria by which we could assess their actual readiness to rule? The story of Balladyna, who – like Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth – gains the crown driven by her own personal interests, rationalizes her choices and hides under a mask of apparent innocence, seems to be entirely up-to-date.
Alongside the world of politics, on the rubble of a fallen civilisation, we can see the birth of a capricious, idyllic realm of Goplana, which – carried by language like the media – creates events of the mortals according to its whim beyond the rational logic of events. The worlds of chaos and order function side by side – both influencing and undermining each other. The state of ideal democracy should be established on the basis ofcomplete transparency of the elites.
In a world in which it is so difficult to distinguish between illusion and realism, democracy appears to be a fantasy as real as the sorcery of a Slavic witch.
Invitation
for a performance translated into PJM
Spectacle
translated into Polish Sign Language
Photo shoot for the performance
Photo: Bartek Barczyk © Teatr im. J. Słowackiego w Krakowie
Session
Photo: Bartek Barczyk © Teatr im. J. Słowackiego w Krakowie
