Ferdydurke

"Ferdydurke" is a novel based on facts. And this will be confirmed by an interview with every thinking thirty-year-old. It is enough to ask who he is, how did he come to be who he is, whether he can even specify what he is sure of in life and what he is definitely not sure about. There are no unfounded considerations here, no fancy philosophy, these are confirmed facts. It is like that in the novel and it is like that in the Radom production, created by a group of people more or less oscillating around thirty in age. A staging built on facts, on universality, on a mouth created for us, which builds us.

Gombrowicz himself commented that the main problem of "Ferdydurke" was the problem of form. Man is never himself, loses authenticity, falls into new forms imposed by other people, but he is also their creator. The form will then be a way of being, feeling, thinking, speaking and acting. And it does not matter age, epoch, place, sex, social class, there is no escape from form.

The performance does not specify the place or time of the action, uses ascetic set design forms, is built on acting, movement and, above all, Gombrowicz's word. Józio, trapped on the stage, cannot get off it, and the more characters appear on it, the more voices there are, the tighter the clinch grips him. And at the same time, despite the absurd, grotesque, and philosophical digressions, we want to show simple interpersonal relations: between colleagues, between the teacher and students, between members of the same family, between commissioners and service providers. These are simple accounts, because not much has changed since Gombrowicz's time.

The performance is co-created with me by the set designer Natalia Kołodziej, composer Łukasz Matuszyk and Katarzyna Kostrzewa responsible for stage movement. Young actors of the Powszechny Theater in Radom perform on stage, including Mateusz Paluch, who is debuting in the role of Józio. It might seem that we embody what Gombrowicz himself liked and valued: youth, truth, energy, and conscious indeterminacy.

It cannot be a coincidence that I am directing Ferdydurke right now, at the age of 33, which is exactly the age at which Witold Gombrowicz wrote his first novel. The relationship of thoughts and observations sometimes surprises me, but it makes me believe that it is good, that I am, that it is good, that it is right now. I am totally involved in the spectacle that I create, but I know that it is also created by other people, and then other people will watch it, so the same question arises: who really is the creator of "Ferdydurke"? Author? Producer? Contributors? Recipients? We all create this spectacle and we all have an influence on what it is like. It is known that some will be wise, the other will be stupid, one significant, the other barely noticeable, one common, the other aristocratic, Gombrowicz himself wrote about this. And further, to paraphrase his words: the curse of mankind is that everyone must be felt and judged by everyone. The same is the curse of the theater. So come feel us and judge us!

Alina Moś-Kerger

The performance was honored with the acting team award at the 13th International Gombrowicz Festival and qualified for the finals of the 4th edition of the Competition for the Staging of Old Works of Polish Literature "Klasyka Żywa".

Award for directing for Alina Moś-Kerger at the 44th Opole Theater Confrontations / "Klasyka Żywa"