Arek Jakubik: Romeo and Juliet Are Alive

Musicians: Arek Jakubik, Paweł Derentowicz, Paweł Pittner, Adam Czarnecki, Romek Rojewski, Dawid Wielogórski, Maksymilian Kucharski, Jarek Fraczek, Michał Wasiak

A rock variation of the most famous melodrama in human history.

This is the concert version of a project originally written and composed for calm, focused studio work (which resulted in the album Romeo and Juliet Are Alive). But let’s be honest — for the charismatic artist Arkadiusz Jakubik (actor / rockman / performer) and his need for direct, live confrontation with the audience’s emotions, there is no better place than the stage.

The story is set in Piaseczno, a small town near Warsaw (or, as Alfred Jarry would put it, nowhere), far from the glare of the metropolis, which exists only as reflections in the dreams of the protagonists: Jan and Krystyna Marzec, and the third character, Cezary Kot. Jakubik sings of youth crushed by time and illness, of love, betrayal, longing, and regret, of attempts at redemption, of everyday consequences, and the wrong choices people usually make.

At the same time, he conducts a kind of ‘journalistic investigation’, piecing together the anatomy of a tragedy that — not entirely unexpectedly — brings to an end these strangely familiar/alien (delete as appropriate) cycles of small human existences.