Actors:
Klara Bielawka,
Arkadiusz Brykalski,
Joanna Drozda,
Rafał Fudalej,
Andrzej Konopka,
Maciej Pesta,
Magdalena Warzecha,
Wiesław Cichy
Directing and dramaturgy: Bogna Burska
Cast: Ewa Hevelke
The performative readings of "The nest. A play about how to use things in an improper way and yet not waste them", a tragicomedy about contemporary art, written in 2012. One of them took place at the Zachęta National Art Gallery and the other at the Theatre Institute in Warsaw. The intention of confronting the text with the spaces of the gallery and the theater was a continuation of my intermedia and interdisciplinary artistic pursuits. The dramatic text understood as an event taking place in a certain space was to be tested out in two locations with different traditions of creating meanings and cognitive tools.
The roles were assigned to 9 actors, so that none would have to appear in a scene all by himself. The first act, where the artists, curator, director and the technical staff mount the exhibition, and eventually a power shortage occurs, was read in Zachęta’s upper chamber in front of the staircase, occupied by an exhibition of works nominated for the Deutsche Bank’s most interesting young Polish artist Looks 2015.The works presented there - con- ceptual installations And Indescribable outline by Alice Bielawska and Turba, Turbo and Arena byIza Tarasiewicz - became a very good background for a text dealing with con- temporary artistic discourse, difficult to understand for an ordinary viewer of. Act 1 ended by turning off the lights, and the actors and audience approached to the staircase, where the next two scenes were shown - the Critical Artist writing a manifesto and his conversa- tion with the choir, and the opening of the exhibition. The opening, with participation of di- rector, Superintendent, Sponsor, Ambassador and the Minister was conducted exactly the same way and in the same place where actual exhibitions are usually inaugurated in this institution, thus fitting the roles of the actors into real places and characters familiar to all patrons of the gallery. Some of the actors impersonated the viewers who have difficulties coping with the exhibition that is being displayed in the dark. The next two scenes were shown on the ground floor among objects making up the Gardensexhibition (curator Magda Godlewska-Siwerska). The conversation in a luxury beachfront villa of the Old and Great Artist was read by the actors standing within Paweł Matyszewski’s Gardens of obli- vion, which consisted of a pond, plants and a rock garden. The last scene, taking place at the sitting room of intellectual aspirations of the Hostess, was read in the exhibition hall with Paweł Matyszewski’s paintingRavings and sculptures Untitled by Małgorzata.