Dark Vision of Crisis
The Narodowy Theater in Warsaw is staging "The Anonymous Work" by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, one of Poland's best-known 20th-century playwrights. The play is directed by Jan Englert, the director of the Narodowy Theater.
Witkiewicz, known as Witkacy for short, wrote his philosophical and grotesąue "crime story about art and revolution" in 1921, but the observations in it remain surprisingly fresh and relevant.
Witkacy wrote "The Anonymous Work" three years after returning from Russia, where he had witnessed both the February and October revolutions. Social and political unrest became a recurring theme in his writing. The Anonymous Work was inspired by his experience of war and awareness of escalating political tensions across Europe, including attempted communist coups in Germany, Austria and Finland, the Polish-Soviet war and the rise of Benito Mussolini in Italy.
Englert has turned Witkacy' s dark vision in a story of crisis, indifferent elites and emerging radical social movements where tensions set society on a path to self-destruction. The spectacular production at the Narodowy Theater stands out with a lot of music and black humor, featuring
some of the theater's fimest actors, including Marcin Hycnar, Patrycja Soliman and Dominika Kluźniak.
