COMMON BIOGRAPHIES OF THE DEAD POLES. Director Marcin Wierzchowski

Marcin Wierzchowski, together with the students of the Puppetry Department at the Białystok branch of the Theatre Academy, present a play portraying a variety of symptoms of hatred that can be identified in current Polish society. Some of the events shown on stage are inspired by Macin Kącki’s book “White Power, Black Memory”. This collection of reportages investigates the turbulent history of Białystok and describes a number of social and ethnic exclusions, the repercussions of which are still very much visible in the city.

“In the first part of the play, the young artists skilfully act out a series of scenes that portray a common lack of respect for all forms of Otherness, and reveal the hypocrisy of regional communities and the closed-mindedness of the domestic cultural landscape. In the second part, the various subplots, which seemed to have no direct links between them, finally come together and establish a pattern of violence and brutality against everything that doesn’t fit into the traditional norms that operate on the street and in homes—and not only in Białystok.”

(from the theatre’s archive of reviews)