WHITE POWER, BLACK MEMORY. Director Piotr Ratajczak

Piotr Ratajczak’s play is loosely inspired by a book by Marcin Kącki. In a collection of provocative articles, the author looks closely at Białystok, a city where numerous cultures and communities have clashed in the past. Poles, Ukrainians, Jews, Tartars and Bielorussians all lived there side by side. Kącki makes a point of depicting the region’s wide and varied social panorama: he talks to local politicians, church representatives, average people living in apartment blocks and even neo-fascists. For this multi-voiced landscape, characterized by anti-Semitism and hatred of anything unfamiliar, Ratajczak creates a theatrical form full of farcical gimmicks and sudden role-changing. Definitely not your typical light entertainment—in fact it leads to uncomfortable questions, avoids easy answers, and stirs up a hornet’s nest in the capital of Podlachia, with its dark and twisted history.

“Seven actors masterfully embody a variety of characters, including a prosecutor, a well-respected professor, a sports fan about to face a theatrical challenge, the wife of a man of color and a gay man who finds the Nazi who’s targeting him very attractive. The director leads his cast through humorous, terrifying stories, taking the audience on a wild, performative ride through a land filled with racial prejudice, broken promises and remorse, but also hope and faith that multicultural dialogue and understanding might, against all odds, still be achieved.”

(from the theatre’s archive of reviews)