 Good evening, I'm very pleased to welcome you here at Galerius, spelled H-U-S, and I'd like to thank Tristan Mumier, this is a special event for me. This is a stateless territory that we're in. Polish artists have been allowed into a French gallery and this is being streamed live to the US, so it's truly incredible. Your great French artist, Alfred Jari, said that the thing that's happening in Poland, that is to say, nowhere. The scene is set in Poland, which is the scene where... My name is Ion Naklas and I represent the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, which is a national institution that's tasked with talking and affecting others with Polish culture. I'm talking about Polish culture and affecting others with it. And your culture here is special and even for Adam Mickiewicz, Paris was an exceptional, remarkable place in his life. Thank you very much for the welcome in this week when we're holding a retrospective of this great artist, Alfred Jari. It is a celebration to be welcomed with such understanding with the reception that I'm seeing here by the great Paris audience and we appreciate that greatly. But we need to ask ourselves what's next. Now, all of that, now, a retrospective of work by this great Polish artist being held. We need to ask ourselves what's next and who will be next. And moving on to the substance and again to quote the patron of our institution, great Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz, I ask myself, though in the dark and what comes next, what was next, the times are indeed hard. And here I would like to ask the witches of Polish theater for their succor, the young artists who might represent a slightly different approach, different aesthetics, and I'm sure it's worth listening to what they have to say. One of whom is not with us physically, we will be seeing a video recording. And I quote the one who is dancing in our institution, the great Polish poet who was writing here in Paris, all of the darkness present, all of the darkness, what will it become, what will it become? Because being in Poland is very difficult at the moment. But the times are hard. And I would like to dedicate this evening to the first president of independent Poland after World War I, who was assassinated on December 16th by a crazed artist. In a gallery, moreover, right? I will not defend myself from the names of my parents, because the title of the title of Father, Children's, or Patrician, is not as the same as the title of the title of the title of Father, Children's, or Patrician, because the title of Father, Children's, or Patrician, is not necessarily my idea, because the word was the title of the book of Father, Children's, or Patrician, which will be moderated in today's discussion, the book of Father, Children's, which is the dramaturg of the title of Warsaw, as well as the title of Father, Children's, or the title of Assassin's, if we translate the translation into French. Also, take a part in this talk, as someone who is very grateful to someone who has helped us organize this debate, coordinate and come up with the idea. I want to appreciate and thank you, Sylvia Martin Lamani, thanks for your attention and let's begin with a brief video recording. Let's talk with Veronica Stravinsky, who could not make it to Paris. I have the impression that our society has rarely undergone a crisis, actually is undergone a crisis that women have seen already, have foreseen, but women are not seen as first class or full fledged citizens. I studied at the Warsaw Academy of Drama, and it was a strange moment in the life of the academy, when a lot of women were accepted into stage directing. My year, my class, and the class after me, was full of women. Previously, classes were made up exclusively of men, or there was one woman, but now our classes had five, six women, and men, boys, were in the minority, which led to jokes. People started saying that being the stage director was no longer going to have the cachet it used to, since women are getting into it. But on the other hand, our teachers were very happy to see so many of us women. They were happy because they were surrounded, as they said, by beautiful ladies. We wanted to be treated seriously, since there were so many of us, and we didn't allow them to patronize us, but still they did treat us like little girls. They mansplained things. They said, oh, make babies, or have babies as soon as possible, otherwise you'll go crazy. Eventually, and people said that this job when done by a woman needed a lot of qualifications, and it brought a lot of preconditions, but the situation was very comfortable, great, compared to the situation of female artists ten years older than me, because back then the voices were very, it was very radical. They said a stage director is not allowed to get pregnant, or professors at Polish universities would welcome us and say hello gentlemen. Oh, I'm sorry, lady and gentlemen, and they named the only woman in the department. So I was studying in a transition period, and you saw signs of change, and you saw how much the structure wasn't adapted to us. We were in the majority, but we were still treated like little girls. There were more of us, but we still encountered inappropriate comments regarding our work. When they were reviewing our work, there was always an attempt at patronizing or downplaying what we did, and there was a sense of being threatened. We felt we needed to be careful, thread cautiously, because we were women. You start working in small budgets, and you see that it is possible. My first piece, my first piece had a budget so low that I won't even mention it, but everybody, I thought it was okay, this is my debut, it's my first piece, my first production, but then I realized that with the right approach you can do something before a little money, but then the budgets go up, but you already know how to cut corners, how to save money, how to be frugal. So the first message, the first thing you're taught is that if you don't, you won't have hundreds of thousands, a six or a seven-figure budget, but you can get everything done nonetheless. But then you start thinking how that's done. You get more money, and you know what you need, and you also know what's superfluous, what's additional, but there's a double game that begins here, because the awareness that you will do a piece for a small amount of money means that in theaters they want to grant you a larger budget or a larger fee, and this does translate into gender terms, it's a gender thing, but it's also hierarchical, namely, are you running for the... Do you want to be the best Polish director? Are you taking part in the hosting of the race? Do you want your name to be there? Or do you want to do huge productions that's not a dream of mine, because ideologically that was powered to a theater, to my approach to theater. I mean, yes, I do money, I do need money, because everybody needs to make a living. Everybody wants to live decently. So I'm not in favor, I'm not an advocate of lowering the prices, I'm not the more fees. I don't let anyone work for free, who's on the team, no matter. I mean, I don't ask people, friends, to do me favors, just gratuitously, you're free of charge, but you also don't need to negotiate for a higher fee, because that translates into cutting the fee for people. I mean, there is some flexibility, but this applies to three or four people who can bump up their fees to a given degree, but these are mainly men who can afford to do that. But since it is public money, if you take more, other people will get less, and that's also a message you send to the audience, meaning if you do something opulent, that's a world that we want to identify with, but I relate to the tradition of the avant-garde, where you test certain ideas, certain models, certain shapes, approaches, and for that you need a safe, good working environment, but you don't need huge money to achieve that. My topics, my topics are things that revolve around the community, around Utopia. These are things, topics that relate to the possibility of refurbishing, maybe or changing societies, groups, the community in which we live, and that goes for the piece we're working on at the moment. This will be a piece about the Paris Commune as an event, as a myth, and as an event that's very powerfully linked to our everyday life, or the present day, it's not a historical piece about the Paris Commune, but it will address, look at visions of the Paris Commune. We have very contemporary things on Division of Labor, the rule of artists, and we'll use that to talk about ourselves, to study, to explore things, questions of community, and that's a thing that we'll be working on. But the question of community was also present in a piece we did two years ago in the Terstare in Krakow called the Genius in the Turtle Neck, which applied to the myth of the great stage director Konrad Svinarski with his trademark Turtle Neck. But the question was, does a community need a master, need a barn, need a maestro, need a leader, need a virtuoso? We sometimes called it several characters in search of a master, in search of a maestro, in search of an idol. So it wasn't a show about Svinarski, but it was, as a collaborator of mine says, it was about a keystone of community. And if it's a keystone of community, it's something that we look at. We see if it's a keystone or if it's something that can be displaced, or upon the community, it assumes a slightly different shape. I always have some, I'm always reluctant to see theater as entertainment. I like shows that are funny. I try to have an element of humor in my work, but ideologically speaking, or if I were to produce an ideological statement, theater has to pick at the scabs, if you will, needs to address the difficult topics, and it's a place of difficult radical choices. So if I were to answer personally what matters to me, I see two models of theater. One which in an open way addresses social topics, issues of community, things that are engaged and involved politically. And the other extreme is theater that's radically intimate, because all in all it's the same at the end of the day. If you look at something in a very radical way, it is an experience of community to some extent. So if you look at Michał Borkszuch, Polish Young Stage Director, who manages to reject, to deny the need for a critical position, but he does somehow using his own very private perspective, be critical, so entertainment, variety and so on. I use all the means of expression because it's all around us. Entertainment is all around us in cinema, online, in video games, on TV. If anybody watches TV anymore, it's in TV series, which can be light and entertaining. So I think that an institution where you have direct contact with the audience, publicly funded, shouldn't really bother with entertainment too much and be too focused on entertainment. But we also need to be mindful of the context, what we do, the context in which we're working, because we're not pioneers, we're not landing on stage in a UFO in a flying saucer, and we find a perfect environment where we can thrive, flourish. We need a point of transition. We need a moment where audiences, viewers need to be nurtured and need to be taught a certain way of saying things. So you need shades of grey, but I'm thinking of a theatre that continuously, again, picks its tabs if the image is to be sustained. Thank you. That's... there's things up. I have to speak... I'll be speaking loud because we only have one microphone and we want the interpreter to use it. I'd like to invite our guests. On the left is Magdalena Szpech, Katarzyna Kalbac, Anna Smolar, and Anna Karaszinska. During this talk, we'll be showing stills from pieces by art by the stage directors, and I hope that their shows will be brought to Paris soon as well. But before we begin, I'm trying to say which fathers were killed by the Tecos-Potkanias theme. Patresides, no. First, I want to ask Sylvie to make the association between this meeting and the overriding topic of the Parazone, the overarching. Okay, I also try to speak loud and clear. I'm the co-director of this event, and last year, we published an issue of this periodical call called Women's Stages. It has a subtitle, and it addresses a topic that we were interested in, the position of women theater, the position of women theater generally, in France and Belgium, because we were French in Belgium, a periodical, and we let women artists, female artists from all over the world, speak about their artistic practice, think to determine whether there was a feminine way of making art or not, which is, for some people, found a stupid question, others didn't. We had a whole range, a whole gamut of women from feminists who were very... There are studies that have been made in France. And it is to be hoped that everybody understands French. Now there's a little bit of commotion occasion by the fact that the foregoing needs to be translated into Polish for the benefit of Polish audiences listening at home. Anyway, in France there are studies that are conducted by the Ministry of Culture and various institutions regarding theater, and we realized that women are more than 30% of the profession. So the edge of visibility, if you will, and it turned out that women are only 30% of the place, they are very less visible. So women are underrepresented. Consequently, we decided to use a female stage to represent the female authors. And I wanted to question, to ask these, the artists we have here today, I wanted to ask them what their thoughts are regarding a position of the place of women, women artists in our society today. What is the current situation of women in Poland today, for example, having to do with the ban on women? And what is the current situation of women in Poland today, for example, having to do with the ban on women? What is the current situation of women in Poland today, for example, having to do with the ban or attempts to step up the ban on abortion? Does that affect your work? I think it affects our work in that it distracts us from doing what we'd like to do instead. I feel that there is some sort of coercion against female artists in theater addressing issues of women and controversial matters, which are seen as controversial in public debate. So there is pressure exerted on women not to do that, but there is, of course, I mean, I can speak for myself. There is a need to perceive women's theater differently to fight another way of seeing women's theater. I don't have a particular standpoint, but I deeply appreciated the degraded body but as the other in theater. So not as a high, that was a female body that was deported, but as something as a different perspective, my different views, my upcoming, but my most recent piece was about a man who plays her instrument, skirt, and she calls sheen, and I don't want to feel forced into taking out issues of femininity in theater, but what I'm most interested in is the tension between my life, a professional life, my desire for autonomy in my private life, because I'm a mother as well, and I think that this isn't a show that's a taboo in theater, but it's used to be taboo in theater. I feel that nobody thinks about what gives any thought to women who are artists and mothers at the same time. I think that there are cases about maternity that seek to break abolish the taboo about being a woman in Poland, so I see it a little bit different, please. There are books being written, there's a Turkish female woman writer, a little bit about post-partial depression and issues of transformation and a scattered identity, this first identity which is what happens when a woman becomes a mother, and there was a lot about being an artist, being a mother, and being a woman. And in Poland, there's a very interesting book published recently on the same subject, or similar subject by someone called Natalia Fjodorczuk, but getting back to whether it's comfortable, it's easy to work in Poland or not, and I feel comfortable working in Poland. And I felt something very positive after the last events having to do with the anti-abortion taboo. Because on October 3rd, they called a strike for all women and men in Poland. The general strike, the general civic strike of the very, very many women went out into the streets, these were in small groups of protesters, but it was mass movement and some sort of creative energy and an infectious strategy emerged. I agree, I think good things are happening, so maybe the traumatic restrictions, the traumatic circumstances and the restrictions they're trying to thrust upon us actually end up extending the scope of liberty, of furthering freedom. And another brief introduction. In the 1990s, when I referred to a group of emerging stage directors as patrociners in the title of my book or father-tellers, if you prefer, there was one woman among them and I was accused, first of all, by those who failed to mention that I didn't mention them, of neglecting them, and second, I was accused by those who had described that same concept of that, that they had nothing in common and that they really shouldn't have thrown into the same bag. And I think in their situation here we don't want to prove that there's only a group of women working together doing something in common. That's not the point. No, that's not what this is about. It's not a... ...of like-minded women. Nonetheless, the phenomenon of the world by so many young, talented female directors has emerged that and you on the cross might identify that more on is looking closely at them and just let me to understand whether there might be certain things that they have in them. I think their first shared feature, the first five of them shared, the way in which they treat a theater as something independent of literature even if dramatic literature isn't there anymore. But also, they treat theater as a certain thing of free and independent of any conventions, norms, standards, any perceived wisdom as to the purpose of theater. However, I think they remain faithful to a belief that's been around in Polish theater for a long time. And I think that theater, not life, is the place, the locus where you can find the truth or truth to the truth. And I think this is interested and relevant now that we've known these post-truth times. And I think once again, we're with the same... I'm in poker where you check what you should call somebody's bluff and that's what theater is doing. I'm in poker where you check what you should call somebody's bluff and that's what theater is doing. And another interesting thing that Verli Droschevin's commission and the recording partly, I don't know, towards the end it relates to the gender of the artists. But it's true to say that they do work a little differently and they tend to work more collectively and in a way they overthrow, they subvert to the imposition of amenity and stage directors and the all-powerful, almighty stage directors and their lower female stage directors in Polish theater. But as members of the representatives of an earlier generation they sought to supplant the step-in issues of the omnipotent director and the omniscient director and one last common trend is that they place their trust in small-scale forms because the small-scale forms are more interactive by definition, by nature and to involve the audience can engage in this is better and now a fundamental question regarding patricide since this meeting is held in an assumption junction with the portrait of Christian Lupin in my book from the 1990s I referred to Lupin as the founding father of the impolite theater So my question who are you trying to kill is that Lupin? Or have you worked with him? Have been his assistant? Or is it the omniscient and omnipotent stage director as a figure? So who are you fighting? Against? When I first learned that this talk would be called patricides I started wondering whether it was a patricide or a relay race where you had the other athlete the impotent or the... what? Of course, in athletics but we pass the relay and I think that in art as in all other areas if you want to move something forward you need to systematically to take you down new paths, new tracks new things that haven't been done before or maybe transform process of looking for an element of knowledge of looking for things that haven't been done before but if this has nothing to do with killing anyone of course it's much easier to define yourself of being able to move forward it's not necessarily to kill but to move forward to deviate the ways I think when I was studying stage director in the traditional Polish model the traditional Polish curriculum I later having done that later I realized that everything I was doing professionally went against the grain of everything I'd been taught so it's good to be in opposition to something but to realize that opposition is a continuation it's a form of continuation and that's actually not the same it doesn't select an art it only revives it and people are saying that if we do shows collectively with no strength it will blow down the walls of traditional theater undermining the heritage and that's not the way it is because there will always be people who are willing to do traditional theater and thanks to them we don't have to so we have no obligation to do traditional theater if I'm killing anybody I think it's myself I'm killing each time around I think it's a kind of struggle that I engage in whenever I approach a topic subject this need to open new doors each time around and to start from scratch that's the most difficult thing I wish I didn't have to bear this responsibility I didn't have to shoulder this responsibility I wish I didn't have to stress myself I mean I don't I wish I could have the space of total freedom where I'm not bound obliged to do anything where I'm bound to start over failing and fail better when I was a Christian group as assistant and I worked on two of his projects Persona Mariana and Persona Badi Simona I learned that Christian taught me freedom Christian taught me freedom and their conviction a belief that if you're embarking on setting down a path need to allow yourself to make mistakes and to allow four steps because otherwise that's the only way this road can lead or be creative as a process I don't have to know anyone I have also had a sense that when making theater in Poland is exciting today because we have masters but we also had a lot of inspire our people of their fields of art from other genres and we also have a lot of people who are in between generalization of the people from our generation or other generations who inspire us but also are in being somewhat familiar with French theater and it's very that's also very valuable in a Polish artistic context namely that it's less hierarchical than it would be say but closed there's a freedom and the dialogue is more fluid is easier so I think none of us I don't think there's any way to deal with some kind of parallelism so I'm not parallelized in any way but it's true I think that you need to take over the time when I live in China I don't think there's any way to deal with some kind of parallelism of course without being oblivious to us without being oblivious to us without being oblivious to us without being oblivious to us without being oblivious to us without being oblivious to the stage of blinding can be called monumental theater because I think I think I feel that in our pieces we get across the important thing that we are relevant away and the impact we are getting. But with that, with my own view, we are able to use our position as a human physician of all nations. We are trying to develop this way maybe written, written, and based on the literature. The select between maybe the monumental, the literary, and so on. The connection between the important literature and the monuments is broken up. So they tend to make sure that there is a certain danger for the religious movement on the left figure is somehow sandwiched between the two. Not only can we talk about it, we can talk about it in different ways. But we can look into it again. That is a really nice thing that And the only piece of subject in the way that's not in my mind told, a lot of it also shows the way we see those groups of art in the first place, the novels and what I'm of you. OK, one person, one of you admitted, confessed, one of you confessed their guilt, pleaded guilty. But I'm talking about Patricide or lack of his maybe a little fellow coy and a little funny bit, a little preposterous in some way. However, I feel that if I may once again give back Christian or not, I think that you were fortunate to part. We were fortunate, in fact, in a record term, theaters in Poland for not all of them, fortunately, as much as you might have said, these repertory theaters were opening up gradually a space where you can work. And that's a relatively less new development because for a long time, repertory theaters are staged in texts, and that's what their purpose was to put the texts on stage. And the very serious question that I'd like to ask you about text and theater in France, we've all heard about the death of the Lothar in France. And I think that in your case and your work, the ashes have been scattered. And so why don't you trust texts because you clearly don't? Why do you prefer to devise your own scripts and your own scores for a long, long period of years? So that seems kind of typical, and that's what makes your work, what lends your work, it's what's her nature. And do you ever dream of staging a Hamlet when nobody's watching? I mean, if you ever catch yourself. I do dream of staging a Hamlet. I do. I feel that. Why only now do I understand the Hamlet? I'd like to do it. It's a question of approaching the texts that text with that sum predict and the process is unpredictable. But I launched into the process of working without text for a number of reasons, no matter how unpredictable and fraught it can be. But that's because I believe that working with that text will tell you where work with the process does because the text is the predictable process that somebody's already gone through, somebody else's process. And I'm trying to think about work in theaters as taking into account the fact that we're in all the components of a situation that we can be with all the elements that are necessary against the text. And I, I place myself in this process again with the process and let some higher force speak through me or let some higher force speak the end. When you have a text ignoring the comfortable convenient position, that's something that's almost defined. You have something that's almost formed. But you can never be sure that it'll affect people as much as the outcome of this process that you entered again. And also that has to do with my interested theater. I mean, in fact, in the way I see theater, I'm not interested in a theater that's watchable. I'm not interested in a theater where what happens can happen without active audience participation, at least in terms of an energetic component of energy feedback. It's not a poor. No. The participation, thank you. The active participation of the public. Because I began, I started working theater because I'm interested in the reality of the inside. We're meeting here today, we are present truly. The process where a text is generated is very time consuming, very arduous. My second to last project holds very good took a year to germinate the development. My projects are made in three stages. I meet my tramitana group, my work with the artist, and I do the first text through personal with the artist. The first, we begin with the next, the following month, I want to talk about, which is still a way of getting into the text, I'm creating a structure, some sort of mathematical framework, some sort of rhythm for the text, and the third stage, it usually takes place a few months after that, and it's the time we come work on the text with the tramitana group, and when we begin rehearsals of the text, it's ready, and we check off the third stage, the text isn't ready yet, because the fascinating part is creating the world out of the texts based on the personalities of the actors, the individuality of the actors, and the improvisation, often lead to new scenes which are written by the dramaturg in rehearsal. And it's, I'd also learned that if a director and a dramaturg comes to the first rehearsal with a couple of pages that they no longer see as they thread, they're no longer intimidated or horrified by that three, four years ago when I did the first project of this type. Actors asked me, what do I have to offer? Actors wanted to know, or I have to give them on day one. For me, I want actors to contribute to the creation of this world by communicating with spectators, actors speak of their own experience in the face or vis-à-vis a given topic. I'm continuing my dramaturgical explorations. The text is a space, a vehicle of exploration to the extent that in one of my recent projects, so together with my dramaturg, Marta Sokołowska, came up with a number of versions of the text, which actors perform as spectators watch them. In fact, you never know which way a show will go a given night. I abandoned text because of two reasons for my mention. I began staging texts, a lot of French texts including the French classics, but I felt a growing sense. I had this sense when watching productions. I felt that I was pretending that the people next to me were pretending, actors were pretending and increasingly I began seeing people from outside of the theater world. So kept telling me how they hated theater, and I started wondering and that led me to connect that with my own feelings, my own. And I began saying that the problem had to do with my relationship with text or what we're trying to do with actors in rehearsal with the text. So I started taking deliveries, I started introducing more and more, and it came a time when the percentage of improvised scenes began and improvised scenes made up the majority of the production. Until I concluded that basically it's interesting when actors are co-authors and the pen, the piece, the show of the piece, is dependent on the here and now, is historically bound to the here and now. Also, it also depends on the spectator who comes to the theater on a given day, it depends on the venue, on the time of day, so it's affected by all these factors and this alters, transforms the text of the play. Besides, it's very difficult to do cert titles to these pieces and to have understudies, or to have somebody stand them in for an actor. It's different with me, I don't know how and I don't like to work with a text that I don't like to work with texts, because I don't believe in language or speech as an instrument of communication. I mean, it's sufficient, but only up to a point. It does the job, but up to a point. And whenever I tell actors something, that rehearsal, I feel, I start feeling stupid three sentences in it. I'm happy with the third sentence, because it's never what I wanted to say. And the theater is cool, because you can use all the extroverbal, extrolingual things. It's so... The theater is about things that cannot be said, used as words or a language, and it's interesting. And that's why in my pieces, I'd like to strip down a language for a minimum period of time. Now, could each of you in turn tell us what subjects interest you, what do you think is worth dealing with the theater? Could you be in with a view to your upcoming projects? That's always a difficult question. It's an awkward question and an awkward situation. I could follow up on what I said previously about collective work, working collectively. And I think that working in theater, apart from the pleasant parts, is very difficult. You need to work with a large group of people, and that in itself is a problem. And to some extent, when I begin experiencing syndrome, when I begin feeling traumatized by that, which happens occasionally, I started looking at the relation between the individual and the collective. And in my pieces, since we have a group of actors, thanks to that we're able to address the issues of... We looked at groups, so first we dealt with a group of Jewish actors. Then we looked at students in school, we looked at patients undergoing therapy, and I'm interested in observing and seeing what happens when a group begins revealing things or tries to conceal something. I think what's most important to me now is looking for truth using the vehicle of theater, which is a fiction in my most recent pieces. The starting point is always documentary, is always non-fiction. And based on this evidence, this body of evidence, that we are assembled together with actors, I mean, we're all investigators in the process, so based on that we re-enact the event on stage, or as for the benefit of spectators. But the truth of the event, the truth of the matter, cannot be determined because everybody has their own take on the situation. And this continuous search for truth, which increases the distance between ourselves and the truth, is similar to what we're dealing with in real life, when the copy is increasingly detached from the original, it peels away from the original, and reality becomes a similar thing. So I think that what interests me in theater is to create a space where spectators could, via theater, become alert, vigilant, and know how to tell how to distinguish between various types of truth. Briefly, I'm interested in the relation and people's relation with the world of nature, and the image of the outside world, the natural world, or I started a wonder, and I was wondering for a long time how come nobody does nature documentaries in theater, and that's what I'll be doing next. I never think of a subject, I don't define a subject at the outset. Instead, I try and think of the situation, I want to stage manage and create what will happen to the people I invite to take part in the situation. I'm wondering, I try to figure out what kind of situation it is where I am, who I'm dealing with, and what elements made it all up, how it's going to work. I try and figure out what experience can be achieved, what experience I'd like to evoke. I try and project that, and the subject is actually a pretext. Briefly, I'd like us to talk about something that only Krzysztofińska made explicit, mentioned the economics of theater, the economics of means of production, and about democracy and theater, because in Poland, we're living through a grave crisis of democracy as a political system, but we're also used to people saying how theater is not democratic by definition, it's not a democratic institution. At best, we've said, I received wisdom that talent is not distributed democratically, but also I want to ask about working methods towards this partnership, relevant, there's such change about others, or are there moments when you put your foot down and you say, I'm running the show, the book stops here? Personally, I find the principle very sweet, very important, because in most theaters or bases, I mean democracy is not something that will have people, democracy and partnership is rarely seen or was rarely seen, the experience of my older colleagues in my shows I never, no one's ever forced to do anything. That's our key principle and this, or, and the assumptions of the premise that we're all artists who have come together to work on something, we are all artists of that state, but that matters even more than the outcome to me and it also has to do with the thing that I'm still learning so I don't know anything and that from actors are more experienced or older than I am and that in a way, I don't feel authorized, I don't feel like to tell them what to do in a way or two. I mean it's not because I feel inferior in any way, of course, I want everyone working with me to have to enjoy a lot of freedom or as much freedom as possible so you never banged your fist on the table, you never put your foot down. I break out laughing rather than imposing my will because theater is not a serious thing after all and the community is a value. It's what's important for me is that all the components of my shoulder pieces have equal status, sound, music, text, directing, I see them as having equal status, a performance, sound, text, etc. are all at the same level for me, at the same importance. My problem is that when I fall in love with an idea I do my utmost to carry it out. So I stick with it. I agree with what I relate to what Magda said. I'm increasingly more interested in how we work. And this theater is to be a place of utopia. The question is what relations obtain between people and actually it also has to do with who actors are in the theater, what is their social sense. So I like it when actors start talking to their own name when they take responsibility for what they say, what they do for words and gestures and deeds. But I think it's not bad. The working conditions for stage directors in Poland at the moment are not bad. But I wonder what I'm not less sure about is the status of cultural institutions, even ones that profess very democratic ideals, but in their own operations they're essentially oppressive. And I think that's a challenge for all of us for stage directors. Now I put my foot down, I slam my fist onto the table, but that's because I feel I'm responsible for the process. Not the outcome but the process. And I'm the one who needs to generate the energy needed to make it happen and it has to be difficult because otherwise it's not worth the while, it's not worth it. And if it is to be worthwhile, it has to be difficult. So that's why you need someone to take the burden upon themselves because it's complicated, and it's not worth it. And if it is to be worthwhile, it has to be difficult. So that's why you need someone to take the burden upon themselves if we don't acknowledge that their conflict is inherent, that they need to overcome your limitations and whatnot that you won't get far. So that's the responsibility that I assume. I'm the person who started the... I'm not Tempest who started, who stirred things up, and who stirred things up in the first place. And as such, I'm responsible for what... for... I mean, it's my job to make sure that everybody profits as much as they can from this work of the... I don't believe that profit is... attainable if things are proved too easily. It's 6 p.m., but I see people are... some people are filing out, actually. Some people have plans to catch, including the Polish IT technician who partly made some of this possible, and he is now leaving us. Now, do you have any questions you'd like to ask or... Yes. Unfortunately, the question is practically inaudible and it's being translated silently into Polish for the benefit of the stage directors. So it remains to be hoped that some idea of the question will come out in the answers. I'll write on my own, and that's the way I want it to be. But your... do you write productions? Do you write not texts, not plays, but do you come up with texts? Do you define yourself as... It's about divisor. Do you break it, or do you adapt it? I don't break it. Okay. It's the only author... the only author whom I staged, the only play that I can read from start to finish, which I truly... Joel Pomerá is the only playwright whose pieces I can read from through and through, so I never mess with him. I'll be staging Cinderella and star it out in Krakow. I work with a dramaturge whose name is... to answer your question... I work with a dramaturge called Mihał Błyszewicz on Jewish actors. That's my piece, Jewish actors. And we also have plans for the future. I think he's a very talented writer. And I think that after what I experienced, on my own, we will start devising together again. And it seems that we will... get back to writing the devising chunks of texts that will be important parts of the production. Some of you began by staging the theater grates or some of you also used feminist literature, like Siksu, I think. So effectively, directors come, authors, and this is something we're seeing in France. But I think it's a little different owing to the significance, the import of the text, because of that text that doesn't provide you with an opening situation and this open situation, this starting point can be equally important as a movement or a question of situations. Do we have any other... Who's your favorite playwright, classical or contemporary? My name is Shakespeare. Who? I need a moment to think. Do you mean a playwright or somebody who writes for theater? No, just a writer. A favorite writer. Somebody who led you. I want to say Cortes, but not my big Cortes. A becobo is an author I'm very much into now. I want to stage the women to do this. Mainly because it's so a theatrical... It's an attempt to say something that's very difficult to express in theater. Yes, that's the... Yes, there was a movie. Albert Camus. Albert Camus. I wrote my M.A. thesis on Camus. You asked about authors who brought us to theater. It's not that Camus brought me or led me to theater. But... And his book to the first man. I'm not sure he was the one who led me, but... But recently I think I've... I'm a little lost and I generally define... My favorite author is... I don't have this compass. Moghe? It's more of an observation than a question. But what has emerged listening to all of you and it's been very, very wonderful is that you're not set up as a resistance against a father or a brother. But, I mean, thus far you've emerged young artists who are also women. But, I mean, thus far you've emerged young artists who are also women. You know, in countering the blockages that culture puts in front of women in all professions, I would venture to say. But a lot of you talk about, you know, having significant mentors like Lupa or wanting to do Hamlet or, you know, devised work that takes off from a novel by a male. And all of that seems perfectly normal to me. It doesn't seem anti-feminist. So it's the pitching of the subject of women, young women artists must be inherently against men. I mean, I just wanted to make an observation. At least there should be for women not against men. I hate what I'm doing, but I'm not asking a question, so that's all. Okay, briefly to respond to what you said, but this is not an answer. I'm just remark on what you said. Okay, to remark on your non-question. Personally, if I can confess something, whenever I encounter another person, their gender doesn't matter in the least. So the distinction into female and male stage directors is, I think, a type of theater that's external to theater. It just wins it in the end. I mean, I know that I'm defined by virtue of my fine gender and my age, but that's not something I'm concerned myself with. Where do you sit? Or do you place yourselves? What's your position of the anti-feminine policies of the present Polish government? Do you have a position of your life and your work? Or not at all? The lady came in late and I was not aware that the subject she asked about was already covered at the beginning and it had to do with the political situation, how it affects their work as artists. Do you think it's easier for you to work with other women? I'm not, I don't mean actors, but generally people you work with. So do you seek out women to work with or is it just a matter of chance? Is it some sort of chemistry between you and your female collaborators? I mean, do you have people you work with on your recitations who are currently repeatedly? Something I really wanted to say all this time, I mean of course we, I mentioned the collaborators, we have the long standing collaborators, I mean gender doesn't matter, but now that women are in theater, we have something that actresses, not stars, but actresses in smaller Polish theaters are telling me. They're telling me that we're giving them hope that women will be given ritual or deeper roles to play if they had a heterotune previously. We're, actresses didn't bring deep for which roles their job was to offset a manager. To be what I can be, to be what I can be, and they're hoping that there'll be more of a balance or the problem will go away altogether. It depends on who I work with and I want to take care of everybody as much freedom as possible. It's important for me who I work with because if I want to give everybody freedom I need to trust them, there needs to be trust, there is a chemical balance, chemical bonds between us that is necessary. And it makes things all that much easier. And you can start further down the road to speed things up. Now, after having for some time I have a permanent group of people who work with me, the people I create productions with. When selecting collaborators gender doesn't matter. It's a question of a sensibility, it's a question of an understanding between us, but recently I'm happy to be talking to other female directors I'm happy not unhappy as and it's an enriching dialogue it's for me and it seems authentic and very sincere. And I think that's interesting and it also tells you something I guess about how we work, how we think about theater. So here I feel I mean there's a different, it's different from when I'm talking to my mail to colleagues I agree that there is a point to talking about women in a theater it's a valid fact because we do have a sense of community there is a rapport among us between us. One last question from our class. Can we do something now that would be a symbolic reflection of your work? Let's forget about the split the division into audience and speakers. Let's open the door. Let's let some fresh air in and let's thank one another informally and also let's have a drink. Answer to the question is resounding. I also wanted to say that we'd never be here if it weren't for you on in our class I would have come here if it weren't for you on in our class.