"DEVILS" directed by Agnieszaka Błońska

Premiere 7 December 2019 Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw

Before the premiere, I spoke to Joanna Wichowska, who prepared the script and dramaturgy of the performance

Tomasz Ostrowski: What is the role of the man in the play? One man among many women.

Jeanne Wichowska: On the one hand, we want to dilute a little bit this rigid division between biological sexes and on the other hand use it in an ironic way. If you think about the starting material, there is Mother Joan, nuns and a priest. Only at the beginning of the performance will we use this formula written down in Iwaszkiewicz and then we create a world in which what genitalia we have does not define us so much. On stage, these two worlds will be juxtaposed: the masculine and the feminine. That's why we have six actresses and one actor on stage. When this juxtaposition is present and this conflict is somehow shown, it is rather in an ironic form and in a self-ironic way. We do not have a battle of the sexes on stage. It takes place offstage.

Six Joanns in one place?

This is the starting point. We don't really make much use of the text contained in Iwaszkiewicz's work. We use it as much as it can relate to the present day. How it can comment on the situation of oppression suffered in his work by women and nuns, and in the contemporary world by various women and various 'misfits', those who do not fit into this imposed norm.

Arguably, the themes taken up in this staging could be considered controversial, iconoclastic.

I just don't know if that will be the case. Maybe we ourselves at this point are not sure what is really iconoclastic and what has become iconoclastic because we keep hearing about more bans and more invasions and more plagues. More and more things are becoming iconoclastic. Perhaps this show will be an attempt to see to what extent we are still in normality and to what extent we have to turn on self-censorship, or be afraid or unable to see something. For me this is important, and I will half-jokingly say that for me it is an educational performance, because we ourselves in the creative process learned a lot about female sexuality, corporeality, which are the subject of the performance. And we want to share this knowledge. This stage is a place where we can talk about things that we are forbidden to talk about in other places. Because we are forbidden to talk about sex education. The show is for eighteen years, although I personally think this knowledge should be available for sixteen or fifteen years. In any case, we will be dealing with the subject of corporeality, sexuality and specifically women's sexual pleasure. Our aim is not to shock everyone. We want to restore the natural proportions that are disappearing somewhere in our world. That is, that it is normal to have bodies, that they have different parts, that we make love in different ways, that we make love with different people. I hope that our message somehow gets through to the audience.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

 

THE DEVILS

Creators:
directing: Agnieszka Błońska
screenplay and drama: Jeanne Wichowska
set design: Robert Rumas
choreography: Nina Chyżna
video projections and light: Artur Sienicki
costumes: Arek Ślesiński
musical development: Agnieszka Błońska
assistant director: Krystyna Bednarek
stage manager - Barbara Sadowska

Cast:
Karolina Adamczyk, Klara Bielawka, Aleksandra Bożek, Arkadiusz Brykalski, Oksana Czerkaszyna (gościnnie), Natalia Łągiewczyk, Maria Robaszkiewicz