The Gala: Man of Paper. Anti-Opera on Credit

concept, research, libretto and direction: Jakub Skrzywanek, research, libretto and dramaturgy: Piotr Grzymisławski, music: Karol Nepelski, songs’ lyrics: Jaś Kapela, choreography: Agnieszka Kryst, set design and light: Agata Skwarczyńska, costumes: Tomasz Armada, video: Artur Sienicki
vocal preparation: Anna Serafińska
director’s assistant, stage manager: Sylwia Mączarowska/Bazhena Shamovich

Cast
Ralph Kaminski, Olga Rusin, Julia Wieniawa, Cezi Studniak
Teatr Powszechny: Karolina Adamczyk, Klara Bielawka, Anna Ilczuk, Ewa Skibińska, Arkadiusz Brykalski, Andrzej Kłak, Michał Czachor, Oskar Stoczyński

Musicians: Rafał Dutkiewicz – drums, Jan Wierzbicki – bass/double bass, Mateusz Szemraj – guitar/banjo, Michał Rduch – violin, Paulina Atmańska – piano/synth, Adam Bławicki – sax / clarinet

PPA production: Małgorzata Stobiecka

We like change, so we invite you to the Gala at the beginning of the Festival this year! This unique event will leave no one indifferent and make you discuss and think. Such is the theatre of Jakub Skrzywanek, the director of this year’s Gala: it is socially engaged and ready to touch your minds and hearts.
It will be solemn and spectacular but also funny sometimes. But first of all, it will be musical, trying to tell what power a song has today. The Festival Gala, amidst the glamour and glitter, will address the important issue of economic exclusion, focusing on housing problems.
Drawing on two canonical cultural texts about social injustice – Bertolt Brecht’s “The Threepenny Opera” and Andrzej Wajda’s “Man of Marble” – the authors ask: what would have happened to Agnieszka, for whom truth and justice were paramount? Would she have continued to fight for the marginalised, or would she have benefited from what the transformation had brought?
Here is an anti-opera for our times, where the popular myths of the 1990s clash with the bourgeois narrative. Have we come so far that the past is behind us, or are we pretending to be better than we dreamed? You will get the answers or hints in a truly operatic form, with solemn tones but with a wink.

“Man of Paper. Anti-Opera on Credit” is a co-production of the Zygmunt Hübner Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw and The Stage Songs Review.