Ferdydurke

A dynamic performance based on a clear rhythm by Radosław Kasiukiewicz focuses on one of Ferdydurke's basic problems - the problem of Form.
Its additional advantage are dolls, which perfectly illustrate the process of creating stereotypical clichés that hinder our everyday communication.
The events of the novel are transferred from Poland in the interwar period to the theater. The school, the Młodziaków apartment and the manor house in Bolimów are closed in a wardrobe designed by Paulina Raczkowska. It symbolically marks the next places of action, it is from it that the characters draw on - try on new identities. The school, the boarding house and the manor house are created only by their inhabitants, sketched with a thick line. Simple in terms of comics, easy to describe in just a few words.
(...) The director gives his voice to clichés, decals, and images that have lost their original meaning a long time ago. He reaches into the reservoir of peculiarities, to that "secondary suit of forms" that Schulz wrote about, and takes out more masks from it.
(...) The actors play several roles on stage. The character of individual characters is marked with an appropriate doll: at school they animate one-dimensional boards, in Młodziaków - stiff Javanese,in Bolimów, naive, awkward, mommy-like hand puppets.
Radosław Kasiukiewicz will ennoble the doll. He refers to Gombrowicz's novel, but takes only an anecdote from it. In his own story, he expands it, goes deeper, as if he wanted to, avoiding the comments and interpretations that had grown up around Ferdydurke, to get to its very essence. He evokes the deformed, distorted characters from the novel and distilled a pure form from them. Through overt "artificiality", the constructive nature of the presented world, it reveals an experience that does not exist.

From press reviews:

Boring Gombrowicz? Never in my life! "Ferdydurke" (...) re-read by Radosław Kasiukiewicz almost breathes freshness.
(...) In the movements, faces and hands (because the artists excellently animate the puppets), the actors of "Ferdydurke" laugh to tears. And it is terrifying, because interpersonal communication has not improved since Gombrowicz's times, but even deteriorated. The action changes like in a shimmering kaleidoscope, there are no missed roles. The performance, shown as part of "Small Theatrical Forms" for older viewers, entertains and provokes reflection, and also attracts with its gentle eroticism. It's a bull's eye.
Małgorzata Matuszewska, "Gazeta Wrocławska", November 29, 2013

(...) The satire on the education system and Polish intelligentsia of the 1930s has lost nothing of its topicality. Its stage adaptation was perfectly staged and equally delightfully performed by the actors of WTL.
The entire gallery of characters and behaviors enriched with various types of dolls, incl. with hand puppets, puppets she took viewers into a world bordering on mockery and seriousness, perfectly revealing the absurdities of life. We saw the grotesque in all its glory and in an excellent setting. The spectacle also aptly shows the problem of the inability to escape from form, to fight "mug" and "stupidity". The dynamics of the performance was influenced by the music composed by Katarzyna Dziewiątkowska-Mleczko. Scene with professor Pimko (excellent role of Marek Tatko), who called for admiration for the great poet and called for repeating the usual formulas: Słowacki was a great poet, she amused and disturbed by the strength of his message. The authors of "Ferdydurke" cared for the purity of the text and made a reasonable selection of excerpts from Witold Gombrowicz's novel.
(...) And how can you write that it does not delight, when it does delight?
Dorota Olearczyk, www.pik.wroclaw.pl, January 21, 2013

photo by Paweł Kozioł