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Teatr Łaźnia Nowa Krakow and TR Warszawa, Poland

Running time 1 hour 20 minutes. No interval.

Original title Wunschkonzert

Polish translator Danuta Żmij-Zielińska
Director Yana Ross
Dramaturg Aśka Grochulska
Author of music Aśka Grochulska, Tomasz Wyszomirski
Production designer Simona Biekšaitė
Lighting engineer Mats Öhlin
Curator of the project Marcin Zawada
Radio broadcaster Wojciech Mann

Cast
Danuta Stenka

Yana Ross’s show is based on a text by German playwright Franz Xavier Kroetz. Unlike classically constructed dramas, this play is composed only of a side text that serves as a score and a commentary on the stage action. The protagonist here is a 50-year-old woman who works as a stenographer. She lives in an apartment with modern middle class décor. Surrounded by colorful advertisements and packages, overly-organised and pedantic, she cannot overcome her loneliness. The society that she lives in also doesn’t help, condemning her to exclusion and isolation. Kroetz creates a world where the individual feels very much alone, lost in the manic tempo of the big city. The playwright closely observes the behaviour patters and morality of the bourgeoisie, as it faces cultural and social transformations that force it to re-establish its identity. The lead (and only) role in Yana Ross’s piece is played by Danuta Stenka.

Yana Ross grew up in Latvia and spent her childhood between Europe, Russia and USA. After graduation, Ross collaborated with the Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek. A recipient of the prestigious Fulbright Fellowship, she served as a managing editor at the Yale journal Theater on the special volume Russian Theater of the 21st Century, for which she received the John Gassner Memorial prize. Since 2006, she was a resident director at the National Theater, Lithuania.

Photo: Klaudyna Schubert

Photo: Klaudyna Schubert

Photo: Klaudyna Schubert

Photo: Klaudyna Schubert