Krakow Festival Office
Divine Comedy 2010
Divine Comedy 2010
The Odyssey
Director: Krzysztof Garbaczewski
The title is misleading. It is neither The Odyssey, nor a production “based on” Homer. Garbaczewski does not try to explain what a Homeric tale means today. He is not interested in The Odyssey, be it a journey, be it a reconstruction of the ancient world. The director uses it to seek the formula of non-linear theatre, liberated from the necessity to tell stories. In return, he proposes a collage of loosely combined dramatic scenes, elements of a university lecture, and visual and emotional installations. Amid all this, The Odyssey emerges as a multi-layer infinite palimpsest, where a gloss to the poem is a part of the poem, and the message of the entire work is vested in a footnote. Under such circumstances, the actor is to be the arranger of the associations, the director the one who seeks the technology of association. Garbaczewski demonstrates the inability to silence the cacophony of the myth and its pop-culture reinterpretations with successive layers of meanings that lead nowhere, and enter into amazing interactions. The production from Opole speaks about us being lost today within the library of texts, images, and sounds.
Photography: Tomasz Wiech
Divine Comedy 2010
Divine Comedy 2010
The Odyssey
Director: Krzysztof Garbaczewski
The title is misleading. It is neither The Odyssey, nor a production “based on” Homer. Garbaczewski does not try to explain what a Homeric tale means today. He is not interested in The Odyssey, be it a journey, be it a reconstruction of the ancient world. The director uses it to seek the formula of non-linear theatre, liberated from the necessity to tell stories. In return, he proposes a collage of loosely combined dramatic scenes, elements of a university lecture, and visual and emotional installations. Amid all this, The Odyssey emerges as a multi-layer infinite palimpsest, where a gloss to the poem is a part of the poem, and the message of the entire work is vested in a footnote. Under such circumstances, the actor is to be the arranger of the associations, the director the one who seeks the technology of association. Garbaczewski demonstrates the inability to silence the cacophony of the myth and its pop-culture reinterpretations with successive layers of meanings that lead nowhere, and enter into amazing interactions. The production from Opole speaks about us being lost today within the library of texts, images, and sounds.
Photography: Tomasz Wiech