Krakow Festival Office
Divine Comedy 2010
Divine Comedy 2010
Orgy
Director: Wiktor Rubin
It is not a tale of the body, the pleasure, and the delight, but a theatre study of Power. The monotonous and systematic chain of cruelty and violence that a man and a woman deal to each other is meant to illustrate the principle of supremacy over another human. Violence is the essence of power. In this play, Wiktor Rubin changes the foundations of his directing style, leaving the collages of alterations and formulas aside. He provokes a performance that should disrupt the spectators’ sense of security, and test the mechanisms of linguistic, carnal, and situational enthrallment. We do not understand what Power is until we are wronged, until we have realised how hurt we have been. Thus, every action of the two actors within the space of the play must be aimed not only against each other but also against the spectators. The reactions of the onlookers are filmed and shown on screens; actors take away women’s handbags and comment upon their contents; they search the men, and lock some in boxes on stage, forcing them into mock sexual intercourses. Eroticism becomes lined with fear, intimacy is exposed to the public eye. The Gdańsk staging evokes powerful emotions in an experiment that may be rejected, yet in which one may also get lost.
Photography: Grzegorz Ziemiański
Divine Comedy 2010
Divine Comedy 2010
Orgy
Director: Wiktor Rubin
It is not a tale of the body, the pleasure, and the delight, but a theatre study of Power. The monotonous and systematic chain of cruelty and violence that a man and a woman deal to each other is meant to illustrate the principle of supremacy over another human. Violence is the essence of power. In this play, Wiktor Rubin changes the foundations of his directing style, leaving the collages of alterations and formulas aside. He provokes a performance that should disrupt the spectators’ sense of security, and test the mechanisms of linguistic, carnal, and situational enthrallment. We do not understand what Power is until we are wronged, until we have realised how hurt we have been. Thus, every action of the two actors within the space of the play must be aimed not only against each other but also against the spectators. The reactions of the onlookers are filmed and shown on screens; actors take away women’s handbags and comment upon their contents; they search the men, and lock some in boxes on stage, forcing them into mock sexual intercourses. Eroticism becomes lined with fear, intimacy is exposed to the public eye. The Gdańsk staging evokes powerful emotions in an experiment that may be rejected, yet in which one may also get lost.
Photography: Grzegorz Ziemiański