Based on Zbigniew Herbert’s texts
Creators: CHOREA Theatre
Direction: Tomasz Rodowicz
Music: Tomasz Krzyżanowski, Maciej Maciaszek, Sebastian Klim
Choreography: CHOREA Theatre
Light and sound: Tomasz Krukowski
Visualisations: Jaromir Dziewic, Piotr Wdówka, Joanna Chmielecka
Literary support: Joanna Chmielecka
Cast: Joanna Chmielecka, Julia Jakubowska, Dominika Krzyżanowska Gorzkiewicz, Małgorzata Lipczyńska, Janusz Adam Biedrzycki, Hubert Domański, Sebastian Klim, Tomasz Krzyżanowski, Maciej Maciaszek
Premiere: 8.11.2008, Fabryka Sztuki in Lodz
Duration: 75 minutes
Viewers' age: 14 +
"One learns the game by watching how others play.
But how does the observer distinguish in this case between players' mistakes and correct play? (...)
Look at what we call games.
What do they have in common?
What still counts as a game and what no longer does?
Can you give the boundary? No.
You can draw one; for none has so far been drawn."
(Ludwig Wittgenstein, "Philosophical Investigations")
Playing Mr Cogito is an attempt to transfer the poet’s thoughts to the stage. Precise poetical constructions become disassembled into parts, which results in unveiling their elementary living meanings and exposing the authentic power of words. Fragments of Zbigniew Herbert’s texts are put into new relations.
Three basic theatrical means, words, movements and music, build a stage reality guided by its own rules. They create an inseparable entity – a new chorea. Movements do not illustrate the words, music does not tell the story on its own. It is only a combination of the three that gives birth to a multi-layered world of rather surprising meanings and tangible tension. The surrealism permeating these stage images affects the senses, the subconscious and cogito in the same strong way.
The struggle with Mr C’s ideals takes place in sixteen games. Each of them has its own rules set in accordance with the rules of the unique method of CHOREA. Games played with the poet’s thoughts constitute an attempt to find out what Herbert can tell us in today’s reality. They make it possible for the poet himself to ask us where we are. But who is he talking to? Who is listening to him today?
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