Music, humour, and criticism of the society are Jakub Skrzywanek’s keys to Człowiek z papieru. Antyopera na kredyt / Man of Paper. Antiopera on a Loan, a highly distanced challenged to Andrzeja Wajda’s famous film diptych: Man of Marble and Man of Iron that also alludes to Berthold Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera. We’ve come to a gala brimming with glitz, kitsch, strobes and rhinestone sparkle, where things are expected to be pleasant, joyful and highly entertaining. Only that the whole gala is eerie, as it is the stage for the tales of Polish poverty, everyday extortion, and the ever clearer social inequalities that cannot be bridged.
Using the stage to revive the heroine of those films, the legendary rebel Agnieszka (originally played by Krystyna Janda, now at the Powszechny Theatre, by Anna Ilczuk), the creative team behind this mock-gala lined with gallows humour ask who Agnieszka would be today. Would she still make films? Who would she fight for? Who would she show the middle finger to? Would she stand up for those trying to live reasonably normal lives in Poland, having nothing at all? Would she turn against the self-satisfied elites, overindulged and thriving on the suffering of the poor? Not even for a moment do the creatives of Man of Paper conceal the interventionist political nature of their show.
Just because “Good bye, good bye / We’ve got nothing to apologise for / Things were bad in the past; and they won’t get better. This is where the gala on poverty ends. / Our sponsor is violence / We can afford some honesty. Thirty-five thousand per square metre / Someone’s here got colossal bats in their attic” – as the troupe sing in the finale.
Man of Paper. Antiopera on a Loan was first shown at the Wrocław gala of the Stage Song Review, to become later part of the permanent repertoire of the Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw. The lyrics of the songs were written by Jaś Kapela known from Krytyka Polityczna, and music comes from Karol Nepelski. “The theatre that does meddle”, yet in a version completely different than before.
Strobe lights are used during the performance.
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Photos by Magda Hueckel