„Persona. Bożena’s Body” at the 31st Festival

The 31st Festival of Plays Pleasant And Unpleasant continues. The first presentation of „Persona. Bożena’s Body” by Hubert Sulima and Jędrzej Piaskowski took place on Saturday, 29 March 2025. Thank you for your ovation, thanks to Zagłębie Theatre in Sosnowiec! We have not found answers to many questions yet, an important question referring to the theme of this year’s Festival included: if we forgive each other, will it be easier to create a community?

Sulima and Piaskowski tell a fictional story from Zagłębie Theatre; a spectacle by a famous director with a participation of a famous actress is to premiere there and the actress is to play a role of the title Bożena – a character inspired by a cleaning lady in the theatre. The spectacle is to tell about radical forgiveness… Unfortunately the rehearsals are broken up, the presentation is called off and the actress from Warsaw (actually from Myszków) starts to learn the story of Bożena and her perspective. Meeting with Bożena apparently gives the actress much more than all her previous experiences concerning the process of creating a stage character…

Though the creators reach for local stories, they refer to characters from the world of theatre and politics and on many levels to cultural codes and stereotypes, and yet they produce a universal story about man and his need to be understood, about need of mutual forgiveness. It is also a story about being with another person without any need of pretending and proving anything to others.

Jacek Cieślak and Jacek Wakar moderated the meeting after the spectacle. Hubert Sulima and Jędrzej Piaskowski said they wanted to show how important it is for us to open ourselves to others. We lost the ability of listening about reasons for different choices (political ones included), motivations, circumstances of our decisions. We are being destroyed by conflicts and violence – division into two fighting parties. Possible solutions – openness to forgiveness, understanding, empathy – seem an obvious idea which is presented in an amusing and fresh way. The creators also told about the character of Krystian, a famous director who is a metaphore – on the one hand of an unattainable dream object of all theatre people, on the other hand a symbol of a certain theatre era coming to an end.

Thank you for the meeting!                

 

Zagłębie Theatre in  Sosnowiec
Hubert Sulima
Persona. Bożena’s Body
Directed by Jędrzej Piaskowski
Stage design: Jędrzej Piaskowski
Text, dramaturgy and light directing: Hubert Sulima
Idea, characters, narrative, dialogues: Jędrzej Piaskowski and Hubert Sulima
Costumes: Rafał Domagała
Music arrangement: Tomasz Olczuk, Rafał Witkowicz
Cast: Agnieszka Bałaga-Okońska, Natalia Bielecka, Ryszarda Bielicka-Celińska, Katarzyna Giżyńska, Mirosława Żak, Aleksander Blitek, Paweł Charyton, Tomasz Kocuj

Photos: Joanna Głodek