Anna Karasińska
tr WarszaWa CREDITS director Anna Karasińska dramaturgy Magdalena Rydzewska, Jacek Telenga set design and costumes Paula Grocholska choreography Magda Ptasznik light design Szymon Kluz cast Agata Buzek, Dobromir Dymecki, Rafał Maćkowiak, Maria Maj, Zofja Wichłacz, Adam Woronowicz karasińska the fantasia
tr WarszaWa FROM THE DIRECTOR / PERFORMANCE DESCRIPTION While working on the spectacle, we focused on this particular activity of our imagination which allows us to understand what others feel. It also enables us to connect with them and to look at them in difgerent situations without judging. It also enables us to see their point of view. Let’s say we organized a meeting of a certain number of people who wouldn’t meet otherwise, or wouldn’t notice meeting one another even if they met. It’s hard to say they are theatre characters or fjctional people. They appear at the contact point between the viewers’ and actors’ imaginations; they interact with each other; accompany each other and disappear. The spectacle also features the process of taking on the roles by actors. We hope that in this meeting a certain sense of intimacy and joy arises and that the mechanism of unselfjsh perception of others can be “taken from the theater’ by the viewers. anna KarasińsKa karasińska the fantasia
tr WarszaWa The Fantasia is a play with imagination. Witold mrozek, gazeta Wyborcza karasińska the fantasia
tr WarszaWa PERFORMANCE NOTE the man on the bus grabbing the handrail before me; the person who packed your box of raisins in a faraway country; a man who dived into a river in chinese Xi’an. What do they have in common? they’re all characters in the Fantasia, yet none of them appear on stage. they exist solely in the minds of the director, the actors and the audience. Anna Karasińska is among the most original voices to have emerged in polish theatre in recent years. she is a graduate of the Łódź Film school’s direction department and, like many of her post-theatre 1 contemporaries, Karasińska has emerged from a background other than theatre-making, embarking on a multi-channelled exploration of the phenomena of the theatre itself, playing on conventions and audience expectations in surprising ways. don’t expect roles or elaborate productions. the events play out on an empty stage with the bare minimum of a set. the actors don’t pretend they are not actors; they speak directly to the audience, breaking the wall between the stage and the house. post-theatre eschews the illusion of the stage in favour of ‘performative situations’. post-theatre emerges in opposition to a traditional theatre dominated by the literary text, illusion and the separation of stage and audience. its practitioners, unlike the theatrical revolutionaries of the 1960s, have opted to remain inside the theatre building and create new situations within its walls. they dismantle the hierarchy governing the 1 Term originated by Polish critic Tomasz Plata describing Karasińska as one of directors who ‘are fatigue with the theatre establishment is their starting point – yet their final goal is always theatre itself, often reduced to its simplest forms and shown shorn of adornment’. karasińska the fantasia
tr WarszaWa actor–audience relationship to create an a more immediate and spontaneous theatrical experience, one which occurs only once: here and now. such was the case with Karasińska’s debut play Ewelina’s Crying (2015), in which well-known actors from the tr Warszawa played drama students attempting to perform the roles of these same artists. What resulted was a story about our complex identities, which comprise numerous, often contradictory, narratives. in her second production, called The Second Performance (polski theatre, poznań 2016) the actors play various types of viewers, efgectively turning a mirror toward the audience. and in the solo performance Birthday (Komuna Warszawa, 2016) Karasińska appears on stage in person, while a monologue about her insecurities associated with public appearance plays from the speakers. The Fantasia (tr Warszawa, 2017) is the fjnal installment in Karasińska’s series of meta-performances. she hides out somewhere in the auditorium, from where she issues instructions to the six actors on stage. the actors have no set roles and the director responds to the events playing out on stage. how does this unique agreement form between the audience and the theatre, allowing actors to create real-time worlds on the stage? how are we convinced of the reality of the performance? are there limits to our imagination? are there things that are inconceivable in the theatre? roman paWŁoWsKi head of programming department, tr Warszawa karasińska the fantasia
tr WarszaWa karasińska the fantasia
tr WarszaWa AUTHORS Anna Karasińska stage director, attended the Władysław strzemiński academy of Fine arts in Łódź and the Faculty of philosophy at the university of Łódź, graduated from the Faculty of direction at the leon schiller national higher school of Film, television and theatre in Łódź. her student short fjlms, features and documentaries were shown at several dozen festivals around the world, many winning international prizes. she made her theatre debut with her original production of Ewelina’s Crying , staged in 2015 at tr Warszawa as part of the tr territory (teren tr) project. in 2016 for Ewelina’s Crying , anna Karasińska won the Kazimierz Krzanowski promotional award at the 51st KontrapunKt small theatre Form Festival. in 2016 Karasińska directed the Second Production at the teatr polski in poznań, followed that same year by Birthday staged as part of the micro-theatre at Komuna/ / Warszawa. in 2017 she also directed her another original play in tr Warszawa – The Fantasia that was shown at dublin theatre Festival in 2018. in 2018 she directed 2118. Karasińska at the nowy teatr in Warsaw. karasińska the fantasia
tr WarszaWa karasińska the fantasia
tr WarszaWa PRESS REVIEWS The Fantasia is a play with imagination. simple play with a sophisticated simplicity, incredibly funny, and at times profoundly moving. the abstract play Fantasia is the return to tr Warszawa of anna Karasińska, author of the hit production of Ewelina’s Crying . yes, with Karasińska’s personality terms such as “abstract” and “hit production” can actually be used in the same sentence. as the title suggests, The Fantasia is a play with imagination. the director is present, though invisible. she is heard on the loudspeakers, live, addressing the audience directly. her words paint imaginary scenes actors, called out by name by the director, pick up on the go. the lab- like minimalism of performance is united here with the humour of semisilent stand-up comedy. The Fantasia could not work so spectacularly without its brilliant actors. the cast includes agata Buzek playing, among other characters, a woman not ashamed to dance to her favourite song, dobromir dymecki as, among others, a polar bear in Krupówki street, as well as the great newcomer to stage acting, Zofja Wichłacz, known for e.g. Warsaw ’ 44 [dir. Jan Komasa] and Afterimages [dir. Andrzej Wajda] . returning from the previous production are maria maj, adam Woronowicz, and rafał maćkowiak. the play is the quintessential emotional abstraction, or, in other words, an attempt to reduce drama to its basics, as with colour and texture in painting. it is all about acting compressed to situations or emotions drawn with a few quick strokes: a couple of facial expressions, a gesture, a pose. suggestive images in a handful of lines: theatre haiku anyone? Audience thrown into hastily constructed world the director’s words and actors’ bodies come together to reveal individual emotions and thoughts of an everyday quality, somewhat banal, slightly guilty: hidden and suddenly revealed. are they there in the movements and gestures of actors, or is our gaze that produces them, prompted by the voice-over narration? at times the spectator is plunged directly into the hastily constructed scene: “now Zosia is karasińska the fantasia
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