On February 25 was the premiere of a play, "Who Killed Alona Iwanowna?", which was advertised as being based on Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" and primarily an allusion to the murder of our colleague, housing activist Jolanta Brzeska. We were invited to a special pre-premiere showing for a small select audience on the 24th.
Although artistic tastes may vary, many people were furious and comments ranged from calling it "pretentious shit" to "a complete outrage". The playwright wrote something of an artistic comedy, throwing together all sorts of themes, social, anti-social and artistic, in a completely shallow melange of meaningless crap. Instead of a thought-provoking social drama, we were forced to sit through spasms of nonsensical vomit, with the occasional thought thrown in almost randomly throughout the play. What is worse it that it dealt, among other things, with a real person, who was not a fictional piece of somebody's imagination, but a woman who fought for her rights and others' and was burned alive because of it. Unfortunately this did not seem sufficient material for the artist who instead created a character who was depressed, bent on suicide and a little crazy, helpless victim. Not at all like the real person we knew. What's more is that the friends and family of Jola were fighting against the hideous suggestions of the prosecutors that perhaps Jola was depressed and went to the woods and set herself on fire, so the character in the play was rather insulting.
After the pre-premiere, some people decided to go back with the message that THIS WAS NOT FUNNY. One woman made a direct action during the play; we don't know if the audience just understood it as part of the show, but we think that it definitely improved that stupid piece of shit. The comrade went out on the stage in a mask and made a speech. She said that she came out in the mask because the lawyers of the landlords Marek Mossakowski and Hubert Massalski and the President of the City, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz are probably in the audience listening to what is being said. She alluded to the fact that people are not allowed to say it openly, or even write their whole names - just Marek. M, Hubert M., etc. and then she claimed that it was the people of Mossakowski that killed Jola but the prosecutors' office did not even interrogate him, even though he was clearly the main suspect. Then the comrade said that Jola was not the only one whose life was ruined by the city's housing policies and that we have to say loud and clear that the authorities, headed by Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, are responsible for the murder. The fact that ghettos are created, that students in debt are committing suicide and that Warsaw became a playground for a bored elite was also mentioned and finally there was a call to resist and to do something about it.
Finally something worth seeing in the Teatr Dramatyczny!
We hope that this message got to the part of the audience who actually wanted to see a social drama. At least a bit of the truth got out.
We plan to protest on March 1, which is the anniversary of Jola's murder and we invited the people who maybe were interested in this case to do something more than sitting as spectators in the theater.
Although artistic tastes may vary, many people were furious and comments ranged from calling it "pretentious shit" to "a complete outrage". The playwright wrote something of an artistic comedy, throwing together all sorts of themes, social, anti-social and artistic, in a completely shallow melange of meaningless crap. Instead of a thought-provoking social drama, we were forced to sit through spasms of nonsensical vomit, with the occasional thought thrown in almost randomly throughout the play. What is worse it that it dealt, among other things, with a real person, who was not a fictional piece of somebody's imagination, but a woman who fought for her rights and others' and was burned alive because of it. Unfortunately this did not seem sufficient material for the artist who instead created a character who was depressed, bent on suicide and a little crazy, helpless victim. Not at all like the real person we knew. What's more is that the friends and family of Jola were fighting against the hideous suggestions of the prosecutors that perhaps Jola was depressed and went to the woods and set herself on fire, so the character in the play was rather insulting.
After the pre-premiere, some people decided to go back with the message that THIS WAS NOT FUNNY. One woman made a direct action during the play; we don't know if the audience just understood it as part of the show, but we think that it definitely improved that stupid piece of shit. The comrade went out on the stage in a mask and made a speech. She said that she came out in the mask because the lawyers of the landlords Marek Mossakowski and Hubert Massalski and the President of the City, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz are probably in the audience listening to what is being said. She alluded to the fact that people are not allowed to say it openly, or even write their whole names - just Marek. M, Hubert M., etc. and then she claimed that it was the people of Mossakowski that killed Jola but the prosecutors' office did not even interrogate him, even though he was clearly the main suspect. Then the comrade said that Jola was not the only one whose life was ruined by the city's housing policies and that we have to say loud and clear that the authorities, headed by Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, are responsible for the murder. The fact that ghettos are created, that students in debt are committing suicide and that Warsaw became a playground for a bored elite was also mentioned and finally there was a call to resist and to do something about it.
Finally something worth seeing in the Teatr Dramatyczny!
We hope that this message got to the part of the audience who actually wanted to see a social drama. At least a bit of the truth got out.
We plan to protest on March 1, which is the anniversary of Jola's murder and we invited the people who maybe were interested in this case to do something more than sitting as spectators in the theater.
