XVI MFG Ferdydurke - Teatr im. A. Fredry, Gniezno

Ferdydurke is both a psychological and philosophical treatise and social satire. It’s a mocking but helpless tale about human relations, with the inevitable absurd and all-covering ‘mugs’ lurking everywhere. Gombrowicz unmasks bombastic seriousness and fights the artificial form, ponders the issues of immaturity, youth, and oppressive society and culture — especially that of Polish gentry, Catholic and parochial. Piotr Ratajczak, well-known for his productions at the Dramatic Theatre in Wałbrzych, the Polish Theatre in Poznań, the Contemporary Theatre in Szczecin, the Silesian Theatre in Katowice, J. Osterwa Theatre in Lublin or the Warsaw Polonia, has chosen this, one of the best known novels and a classic of Polish literature. Inspired by the novel’s chief motifs, the authors tell a story of man’s liberation from the form, imposed both by society, family, and tradition, the education system and the media, as well as about an escape from ‘the mug’ and cliched perceptions of others. The thirty-year-old Joey is kidnapped by his former teacher to the present-day school, a romantic situation in a contemporary home, and to a multi- generation family. The world he happens to inhabit is dead, its ideas outdated and obsolete. The Gombrowicz figure, who appears on stage, comments on that world and points out Poles’ subservience to Poland, treated strictly solemnly, as a symbol and a duty. ‘The director Piotr Ratajczak, the playwright Maria Marcinkiewicz-Górna, and the whole ensemble staging the Gniezno Ferdydurke approached their ‘school duty’ creatively and boldly. They have indeed done their educational tasks, while the addition to the compulsory lessons in Polish literature of a substantial and unusual ‘artistic bonus’ has given audiences plenty of genuine pleasure, expressed among other things with a long, stormy ovation after the show’s premiere performance.’ Juliusz Tyszka, teatralny.pl