„Flight” at the 28th Festival

On 1 April, at the 28th International Festival of Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, we presented „Flight” by Zenon Fajfer, directed by Anna Augustynowicz. Thank you for the night! Another presentation of „Flight” – on Saturday night. 

A group of Polish passengers boards a Dawne Bohatery  („Old Heroes”) plane, each person carrying luggage (may be excess luggage ) full of experiences, bitterness, national frustrations and mutual animosities. The board of the plane reminds a theatre audience with the spectators having a mirror in front of them. The viewers look at themselves in the theatre, the theatre looks at itself in reality.

Poem-drama „Flight” by Zenon Fajfer and its interpretation by Anna Augustynowicz take us to a world that is extremely offensive and poetic at the same time, oneiric and prosaic. The plane flies in a mist, through the clouds. Sometimes it is above them, sometimes below so we can look at the world from a distance. Fajfer builds his text from separate thoughts and quotations that exist somewhere inside us like slivers. In „Flight” our national self-reflection does not have a critical nature of current reality. It is more a literary and theatrical automaticity of thoughts, a great improvisation that reaches deeper than we can understand. It touches us and makes us tremble.

After the spectacle Łukasz Drewniak spoke with its creators about „how to change a Pole into a man”.  Zenon Fajfer said he had to write „Flight” in order not to go crazy, to give way to emotions connected with the state of Polish spirit. - Each of us has somebody living in Smoleńsk street – said Fajfer referring to a fragment of the stage text by Bogusław Kierc,  a poet and actor who had been the Współczesny Theatre director before Anna Augustynowicz. Irena Jun noticed that actors in „Flight” take part in a classical, ideal theatre performance – complete, connecting words and gestures, making it possible for the energy to flow between actors and viewers.

Anna Augustynowicz underlined that there were many quotations from her previous productions in „Flight” – fragments of „Chopin’s Piano” and „My song” by Cyprian Kamil Norwid, „The Wedding” and „Liberation” by Stanisław Wyspiański, „The Marriage” by Witold Gombrowicz;  one could also find Konrad from „Liberation” or Bobby Kleks from „Come Back”…

 

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Współczesny Theatre in Szczecin
Zenon Fajfer
„Flight”
Direction: Anna Augustynowicz
Stage design: Marek Braun
Costumes: Tomasz Armada, Martyna Konieczny
Music: Jacek Wierzchowski
Video: Wojciech Kapela
Stage movement: Zbigniew Szymczyk
Light direction: Krzysztof Sendke
Cast: Anna Januszewska, Irena Jun, Barbara Lewandowska, Grażyna Madej, Magdalena Myszkiewicz, Paweł Adamski, Wojciech Brzeziński, Grzegorz Falkowski, Mirosław Gawęda, Bogusław Kierc, Nikodem Księżak, Adam Kuzycz-Berezowski, Wiesław Orłowski, Zbigniew Szymczyk, Przemysław Walich, Mateusz Wiśniewski, Bartosz Włodarczyk and Zofia Walich