 So welcome everybody here to the Martinie Siegel Theater Center, the Graduate Center CUNY. It is 1230 noon time in Manhattan and we are having with us today one of the great workers in global theater, Dorota Maslawska, a great writer, artist, singer, poet from Poland and Christina and Tomek from the Polish Cultural Institute and from Yale University and we are going to talk today about Dorota who has been many times at the Siegel Center and we are celebrating a great event which we got done in the time of COVID. It is the book for place by Dorota Maslawska and the plays are no matter how hard we tried a couple of poor Polish speaking Romanians, Bowie and Warsaw, which actually will be shown live today at 730 at the Bohemian National Hall and how I became a witch. It's really fresh out of the oven. It still smells like fresh print and came out last week. So welcome everybody and Dorota, where are you and how are you today? I'm really excited. I'm really happy because we started to plan this book before pandemic and then the works stopped and actually in the past few months I wasn't sure if it really comes out. So the fact that it's not a prop but it's a real book, as you said, smelling of fresh print is really a beautiful surprise for me and I think that in Poland such a book doesn't exist. Like I don't have the anthology of my place. So this is the first one and it's American and I'm really proud of it. Yesterday I came from Chicago where Bowie and Warsaw was staged by Trapdoor Theater and this is the play you mentioned that will be shown in Bohemian Hall today, tonight. Yes and I'm in Manhattan right now and I'm really excited to have this talk with you. Fantastic, thank you. I didn't know that there was no anthology of yours in Poland, so it's quite a privilege for us here at the Siegel Center who had you actually very early I think 2006 already or something you came to us in the very beginning. So let's welcome Christina. Christina, tell us a little bit about you first where you are, what time it is and what you do. Okay, nice to be with you. It's very funny that usually I would be with you in New York, but it happens so that I'm speaking from Warsaw. So I'm with you in New York, so I'm in Warsaw. Yes, hello. And, and, well, I would like to say a few things about Toyota. Yeah, let's, let's first say hello to Tomik. So tell a bit you are a researcher, you're an academic, you're a writer. Tell us a little bit about your work. I work at the university, yeah, the university where I teach Polish, I teach Polish culture, and among other things I teach Polish film, and I teach Polish theater and I have to say that in both my courses. Toyota's work is prominently present because I find Toyota's work one of the most important sonorous I will speak about that in a moment voices so my students are connecting to your work through film and through when possible through theater as well. And excerpts from how we tried. Fantastic. And you wrote also the introduction or for our book at Tomik. And welcome here tell us where you are and how are you connected to the world of Dorota Maslowska. So, I'm just across the Hudson River across from Manhattan and where you are in Jersey City. And I am a film and performing arts curator at the Polish Cultural Institute in New York. Frank and I are good friends, we go way back organizing events together. And around four years ago, we had the idea to publish the anthology of Dorota's theater works and as Dorota mentioned, the pandemic actually stopped the project for three years. This event was supposed to happen in June 2020, but had to be postponed. So finally, three years later. Yeah, we have it. I used the opportunity of this book being published to also present play by Chicago based trapdoor theater, who are staging Bowie in Warsaw, written by Dorota. Today's weekend audience in New York and Jersey will have opportunity to see it today and tomorrow at 730 at Bohemian National Hall during the rehearsal for truth festival organized by Pavla Nikola and what's up have a library and on Sunday at seven o'clock. The audience in New Jersey can see the play in at the Jersey City Theater Center during the voices International Theater Festival organized by Olga Levina. It's gonna be at seven o'clock and after all the performances there will be Q&A with the cast director and also with Dorota so please come over if you're around. Yeah, yeah, it is so important that in New York City we see listening here global international theater so much has closed down the Lincoln Center Global Festival, the Coral Festival, many, many others. Even the end of the radar, you know, is in a way endangered so it is great to have our international collaborators and with us and it is wonderful that Dorota took time out of her life to be with us to fly to Chicago see the production now come to New York. So this is really a big honor to have you with us Dorota before we come to you. Christina, since you are someone who over decades monitors the Polish scene in theater and in film. Tell us a little bit how does Dorota fit in what where is her place. Well, I want to say I want to start just saying that something that I mentioned before that Dorota you are one of the most prominent voices sounding from Poland and I always approach your writing as the writing of the generation that is a post communist generation it's kind of millennial, a little bit partly millennial. Anyway, the generation that very importantly bridges the fall of communism and the legacies of communism and this transitional periods and transitional periods have been always for every cultural critic, the most interesting periods because very many things are happening there. I have to say that that Dorota's voice is very prominent one for me, one of the most prominent voices and as we see here. Dorota is an iconic figure at the publication she's really heard by Polish society by Polish critics, and that being heard sometimes also entails, let's say very critical voices in a way when Wojna Polska, so Snow White and Russian Red as in Benjamin Paylock translation is worded these were voices raging. But still, it's, I think, I think this is a pattern that every publication, every, every time you do something, either as the novel or as something on stage, it produces people's reaction, and you are heard. And that's that's one of the most important thing that and very positive things people discuss people have arguments about your work. So you are present even the language you use kind of goes out from the printed page and goes out from the theater becomes a part of the general lingo. And if I were to say what your work is about. Well, sorry, I am speaking here as a professor. Well, I think that as I said you dissect that Polish society and try transition in a very, very often very brutal language, very unpleasant language. And as you say a spoiler change for his name you whether society is unpleasant, and the society really is unpleasant. Nevertheless, the society notices your work, the work is about everybody and every single time Poland, on the other hand, Poland is everywhere. So this is the society that's that's facing commercialization dehumanization lies something that we are accustomed with everywhere. And according to me again. The language that Dorota uses and something that that resonates. You know, in a theatrical way for me. This is these are the echoes of Vito de Gombelewicz and Gombelewicz is language humor the way. Which is past and present merge together. Sometimes it's difficult, because we are unable to decipher which is which. This is also to me. And all kinds of voices all kinds of narratives that happen simultaneously that overlap and confused very often. But this is confused the reader, and the reader has to be confused. So this is what we end in another great name that comes to my mind from Polish the theatrical tradition with all its strange names characters funny laughter. And I heard what amazes me in your theater is laughter, and that laughter that's all encompassing everybody laughs and then boom, there is a moment when I remember I experienced that for instance when I was watching no theater how hard we tried, then silence because people know that there is something very, very, very important very serious dangerous even underneath lurking. The theater, if I had to summarize, this is the post dramatic post modern theater, which lacks unified dialogic linear exchanges, which is as I said very patched, and in which the audience is a very kind of very active participant. So, maybe I will stop here. And then we'll return to all these questions. Yeah, wonderful. Yeah, wonderful. Thank you and and true the work of Dorotai is a novelist and a playwright is a significance that's being noticed as you say her. She's quoted on the top pages of newspapers the German Spiegel magazine asked her about opinion about daily cultural and also political matters. And for the country, something that in America, unfortunately, since the time perhaps of the living theater author Miller has gone it doesn't exist anymore but Dorotai now to you first of all, again, thrilled you're here thrilled we could do your book thank you to come back to the Segal Center which isn't a little bit your American home and hope that you will like the performance tonight but how did you come to the theater you. I remember right you were a high school student and on the side wrote a book became a sensation that the highest literary price you started out as a novelist. Oh yeah. Thank you for calling martini she goes into my American home because I remember my debt you hear my debt you there and in the beginning of 2000 something. I came for the first time to New York and there was a reading of two poor Polish speaking Romanians with Benjamin payload. I remember I was, I was a small girl girl really thrilled and frightened by by by this, this giant city. But be sincere, I, I, I appeared in theater by accident. I used to be another list. I made my debut very early when I was 19, as you said. It was strongly criticized and highly applied at the same time. It was the language of the book. I'm speaking about snow white and Russian red. The language was paradoxical it was at the same time very very brutal very ruthless, very vulgar and stuff with figures and metaphors from classical literature. My head was stuffed off because of my preparations to my high school exams. And this language I think that this language may theater directors to to to ask me for writing for theater. In the meantime, there was, there was my second novel, which was written in a sort of wrap style. Like, it was a mixture of colloquial language and rhymes and it was just the stream of something it was really weird but it was adapted by theater. And it was really, I, I, I, I saw this spectacle. I saw this spectacle and I, I, I felt something I felt that this language really works in theater. It's very oral. It's very vital. People are laughing like mad. And I thought that even if I was from a small town. I never went to theater. I didn't know anything about theater. I felt that I could do something for theater. And, and when I got my first commission from Wurzho Rosmai Tosti Theater. I know that it was a very naive decision to sign the agreement. And, and, and I remember very well that first thing that I did after was I went to a library and I borrowed a copy of Macbeth to check how to how one should write plays. And then I asked my, my, my friend who studied on the first year of theaterology how to write plays and he told me that there are three rules. And this one was that character should characters should say something different that they think. The second was that there should be some bridge between the beginning and the ending. And the, the, the third one I can't remember, but as random as they are, they just served me for writing my first play, a couple of four boys speaking Romania. And that was really, I think it was my main international success, the only one, I would say, because this piece occurred to be, I don't know, the most universal of my of my works, even it was very Polish and touching very Polish problems. In superiority complex, there is this mockery about Romania's as worse people, but the play was staged in first in London, then somewhere, then in Berlin, then, then in Sahaling, suddenly, then in Havana. So, it was really staged everywhere now I'm at the moment I'm writing a screenplay based on it, writing the screenplay I feel very well how all of this piece is that it's, it's, it's really written. Almost 20 years ago and it's just all the problems, the social problems that are reflected in it are really. I'm not current and more, but to me and the director I am how much that I am writing the screenplay with are trying to adjust it to do more actual situation in Poland and I think that I think it might be a good movie based on it. Okay, so this is my, this is the story of my presence in theater that is not that obvious and I didn't mean to be a playwright. Yeah, so you are an accidental tourist in a way and yes I do remember when you came first and the great Akada Brenda helped to make that happen and made us aware of you. And I'm talking about now you have to go to prepare for the work tonight at the Bohemian National Hall for the 730 show of Bowie in Warsaw. I'm talking about you present for over a decade and even longer, almost two decades maybe even work from Poland in New York City, so one of the great active centers like Japan society the French cultural services good to the Romanian cultural center and others. What is special about Dorota's work how Polish Polish universal she said, is it and how do you relate to it. Well, it's a, I kind of compare it to also to like Gombro vision with cuts like Christina did in a way that you know Dorota creates her own language, creates her own words. It's, it's very funny it's, it's very surreal and sometimes psychedelic and it's, it's a fresh voice from from the Polish, you know, playwrights and, as you mentioned Agata Brenda brought your attention and our attention to Dorota first and then we continued the focus on Dorota as the one of the main playwrights in Poland. And all the readings and paging of her plays were always very well received in New York and Chicago with great reviews from your crimes and Chicago Tribune. So that's, that's also shows that, you know, her plays are relevant here and important to the American audience. Yeah, I mean they were stage which is rare, you know for place they do not come from American writers place they do not come from the British Empire. It's very rare to have a staging to be directed at it but you, Dorota made that happen through your work and the interest. And now you also am back. Dorota, why do you write. Why, let's take the play a couple of poor Polish people Romanians. I mean, you're also with the novels but what is special about theater what, what challenges you what makes it interesting. Actually, I don't know. I really think it's, it's a, it's a sort of nightmare question for every writer. Why do you write. And but sometimes I quite often I'm exposed to this question so so I'm used to it, but the answer is difficult. I thought that theater gives me some sort of very lively connection with other creators other artists that I will be able to work, for example with actors with some kind of improvisation. And there will be something very creative creative about it. I think it's also the temptation to see, because work of a writer is a bit boring, because first you sit completely alone and writing your book and then the reception of it is also very individual and and sometimes you have, I don't know, conversation with people who read your book and give you their feedback. But when you start to work for theater you have this very vital spontaneous reaction of people. You can see it you can feel it you can feel the audience becoming one laughing or crying body. And I think this is, this is something that that made me to write for theater. Of course it was sort of illusion. But I also like that very long and colorful life of theater pieces that they you write them, and then they are staged in so many different cultural context. And that's my, my lines my text is fulfilled by actors from so many countries by their experience, but by their bodies. They're intuitions and I think that this is this is something very comparing to literature. It's something really intense and and fulfilling for for an author. Yeah, no that's that's that's quite something to think about that the loneliness of the novelist you know of the that in theater it is about a community human beings in a room talking to each other making agreements, and at a certain time in a space they show something and share it with others in dark. And it's about the energy and and and it's about the moment that we are together in. So how do you write menu when you write your work do you sit in cafes are you at home to what you're traveling. How do you, how's the craft how do you do it. How I used to do it because at the moment I'm. I think it's a completely different moment in my life when I just finished finished my album finished book that that is a collection of my essays about Warsaw. I'm really I'm set up with creating and I'm exhausted. So, it seems difficult to to even imagine how I work because I don't work but usually usually it's very. I think it's a very. It's a source of solitude. I never go to cafes I always sit at home. I have to be very focused. I always do it in the morning because I'm more intelligent in the morning. You can see me now this morning. I'm very talkative and elaborate but the closer it is to the evening I'm I'm I'm just. More and more silent and frightened and intellectually not active. I always wanted to be a professional writer when I was a, I don't know a teenager, but when when you go professional it. Of course it's disappointing because it's a it's a job. You earn money like this. It's not. It's not very romantic, but I must say that. This work even if you do it under some pressure, even if you make money like this, even if you have deadlines. Even if you are forced to writing there are some moments of of insight I think that this is the work that the work on language. That gives you some sort of insight that it gives you a look into deeper layers of reality. I think it's just because you track the way people speak and it's so it's usually it's very banal and and it's just a cheap chat but when you when you go deeper into it, you see that it's so full of some of history of proverbs saying some some very subconscious level in which Poland shows up. And this is what I find that the most freeing moment of my work and I think that all the pieces I I have written are about it. Yeah, maybe before we come to bow in Warsaw which we're going to see tonight. You said a couple of poor Polish people Romanians is something that put you on the stages shall be nibble in and so many others in London. Tell us maybe very shortly the story and what was what were you interested in when you wrote it. I just, I think that that's the story of this story is quite banal because I just heard someone saying, we are a couple of poor boy. Romanians, and it always functions like this that I hear a sentence like that and I start to develop it to develop it to a story. And, and I think that's I don't know why it turned out to be so universal. It's a story about a couple of random people who met at the party and they were drunk they were high they decided to, they wanted to have a joy right they terrorized a driver that they met on a gas station. They pushed into his car. And that's how their nightmare trip through winter Poland started. And I think that this when I read it now I think it's a story about. Now I see that the story about a man and a woman conflict. And that's about misogyny about Polish inferiority complex, things like this. And the idea is that, you know, they pretend to be Romanians and not speaking well Polish and misbehaving, but they're actually Polish. Polish people and they, you know, betray, you know, in a way you know they're there. And the idea is a country the home and, and as you say, you know, that's what they do what they think and how they act who they are. So this sentence so this sentence about two Polish speaking Romanians so freely. Because Polish speaking Romanians don't exist. They do exist but not not. It's not a very obvious figure. And that's a beautiful complex stories as you say so many levels and in a way reflecting and absorbing like a spot but also reflecting in a way like a diamond where more light comes in and shines out of that country that European country a country and change and transition from from the past and no matter how hard we try talk a little bit about about about that play. It's a, it's a play that I have written for commission of some German festival. I was, I think that the title of this festival was digging deep, getting dirty. And since, and since this were German people who asked me for a piece, I thought it should be something about the Polish German issue, which I think is very, which is still very active in Polish subconsciousness. Even if, if this resentment and, and the feeling of being the most injured victim of war in the world in Polish people was slightly diminished by Ukrainian war. And now, I think it's still very present in people's minds. I find it very interesting because this is my one of them. One of my most of the most feeling themes for me how trauma and resentment and the feeling of being hurt is transmitted to to next generations. And that's all this prejudice and feelings of being hurt that I have towards German people who didn't do anything wrong to me. And I feel very well that it's that it's inherited from my grandma. And I made it a subject of this play this weird, mysterious, mysterious intergenerational transmissions of prejudice and resentment. You know, it is it is really quite stunning how you like an echo load in a ship, you know, the depths of what we don't see under the surface but it's what's really there how you detected and how you combine it. And that is, Christina said, you know, create in the static way laughter cries, sad feelings and, and also astonishment sometimes a little shock about that vulgar root language and then the incredible beauty of also of your sentences. So, tonight we will, we will see Bowie in in in Warsaw what was the idea for that. I heard many times. This story, a very short one story about David was David Bowie came to Warsaw in early 70s. And it was, it was always very, it seemed to me very inspiring. And even it was very short because he, he, he was on his way from Moscow to Berlin, he spent only 40 minutes on some very random walk on Zoli bus. The district of Warsaw where I used to live. I always found it really inspirational because, of course, as a person who was born in early 80s, I don't know this times. I know them only from movies and books, especially books that I read as a child and a teenager, very didactic in tone, old fashioned novels for teenagers, written in 70s with very. What is most exciting for me as a writer is the language, which is very old fashioned and very slang. So it's impossible mixture. The authors wanted to make it as teenage and slang and crazy, crazy as possible. At the same time, they were very adult and very formal, very didactic. This were mostly educational novels. So realistic, let's say, and so, so 70s in Warsaw. Well for me like this, very social realistic, very gray, very sad in a way. And suddenly this stranger 40 minutes of David Bowie Warsaw. It made me think that he was a sort of, you know, a flare of color or some kind of unnoticed messiah. And that's how this this piece came to me. This was inspiration. I know that will be will be will be so interesting I cannot wait to see how trapped or interpret that Christina what comes to your mind when you listen to a daughter. So what comes to my mind is language and the question about the rhythm because when I read your stuff, no matter whether this is theater or or prose, it's like, you know, I hear this, this rhythmic prose, and I want to immediately say it aloud. So this theatricality is there. It's, it's something amazing that when you write for instance when I was reading. The Queen's peacock or puke, if you want. Yes, well this is like you know that the overlap. I had to. I started reading it aloud so so how is that theater built into your language how do you hear you see you very often talk about language. How do you hear that language. hard to explain I think it's. The main factor in this process is a pleasure of pleasure of a beautiful sentence, like I like to write sentences that are astonishing. And, and read me call and there is some hard to spot beauty in it. And this, these are sentences that I want to give to people. These are the sentences I love. And I think that's this love is the factor and I just love how they sound. I love how people react to them. I like to derive the audience into some sort of chain of associations, rhymes, weird connections. These are visions, and I think that the. This is what I like about theater that it gives this opportunity to observe observe the reaction of the reaction of people that spontaneous reception sometimes. I think that a couple of times I, I really saw people that start to clap their hands to. To physically involve into a spectacle. And this is what is very what I don't like theater very much but this process of. Having this impact on people this very physical impact by language is really something for me as an artist. Yeah. No it is it is quite quite but I might even read a few sentences you might hopefully maybe read to us at the end of the talk in your play your next movie might talk about how I became a witch. Because only you said when I started out as a novelist and I was there I didn't know which is which, but you became a witch. And so it's interesting and it's a grim fairy tales base story a children's story but actually for grown ups as all grim fairy tales were not for children they were for grown ups they were told in the homes I actually come from that region in Germany, where people told them in the cold winter nights. So here, which says, when I'm walking home all wet cold and mean I look in the windows that I pass with a layer. I live at the world's edge so the walk takes two years. There's so many windows and all of them lit and wherever I look. I see people sit. And so far someone their parents knees but they're all staring blankly at flat screen TVs. They're checking to see if they have more more more or too little as little as they had before. Tell us a little bit about this play. It was, it was a play I have written as I learned from Christina's prologue actually yesterday, when my, my daughter was only nine and I think I was very deeply immersed in literature like this, we have a strong tradition of written of children literature that is very written cow like Emma's poor children, I would say. And this is what I wanted to do to to make a story that is very informative very traditional and and old fashioned, but I wanted to I don't know this, this criticism criticism against consumerism capitalism and watching TV, which is not very actual. You know, when, when everybody's addicted to smart phones, rather than TV sets. But I wanted to to to fulfill this very traditional form with something with with some modern critical attitude to to to I don't know pop culture trash and to see how children react to this. So if they did they didactic in tone as well. I don't know. Children liked it. It was based in it. There was a huge Broadway, Broadway, I would say a show in Warsaw. The studio. Children loved it. It was very funny and to glue me at the same time. So, but it's not, it's not the most important thing I didn't like that for sure. And incredible the author at Tabalowski by the way did that translation so beautifully which I read from a friend, I think I got a collage. If I say the name right from Tia Barsova said also great daughter's coming. I listen to our music and when I work out you know this is my favorite song so so in that way you are a classical bar you're also a singer you know in Homeric tradition and writing plays singing songs, writing novels, how is that all connected for is it one continuous reflection are they very different or does it influence each other how do you how do you deal with this puzzle of your artistic realization. So that's for sure that this, this very different measures that I use to express myself influence each other. For example, I think that my, my, my way of my development is not, it's not a very obvious way. It's, it's, it's bumpy and it's not logical because I started as a novelist then I started to write for theater, then I was a novelist then I started to write songs, I started to produce music. And for now, I think that I became a poet, which is, which is weird, but I see some logic in it, like this process of writing and writing and writing. I think it gave me some sort of precision and what I, and what I say. And that I need less and less words to express something that I want to express. And that's why, that's why I turned to music as a matter of expression. I also think that the situation in Florence, and political and, and so so is so tense, and so dense, and so unbearable in some way that literature is unable to express it anymore, like how many times can you say, Oh my God, it's like nothing worse can happen. And there is always something worse that happened next day. So I think that I just, it was an intuition that I need something more more radical, more expressive, more violent. And I think that there is always some, some kind of belly knowledge. What to do now, what to do next. And, and this intuition told me that it, it should be music at the moment, but I don't, I never know what is next. I never know where, where, where it's it will bring me, where it will bring me. Let's talk about Poland. Oh yeah, Christina. Could I ask a question, you know, mentioned it in relation to this that you are doing films you are doing music. Where can people see your films because, for instance, other people in Lugia, or some other films are not available. And this is a part of a very important part of kind of sharing with with whatever you do with the public. I think that the movie, based on Snow White in Russian Red by Ksavir Ksavir-Juarski is easily available on YouTube. I'm not sure if in states, but in Europe for sure, but other people. This movie is a special case because the language of the book which is actually a rap song was so difficult to not only to translate but also to put into subtitles that they are I am not even if it's a question of if they are comprehensible, but if they still make any sense at all. So I think that this this movie is just unbearable for foreign spectators. And I think that it's, and even it was published in it was published in the difficult period after just after pandemic. So it didn't have a big audience. And was very, its presence in cinemas was very short. And now it's available only on Cannot Lose, I think, but it's not. I think that the whole distribution of movies changed and this, this special movie felt victim to that. Well, there will be, I'm sure, ways down the future and it's on channel, but let's go back because you touched on it on Poland. I think Heinrich Heiner wrote his famous poems also when, I think in Germany in the night, when you think about Germany in the night, you know, what do you think about Poland in the night. Well, I think, I think only one thing, let's not allow to win peace and not this election, because it will, it will turn this country to to to abuse health and say, it's quite a hell at the moment because, because of polarization because of permanent conflicts because of the very populistic line that peace has in its politics. But now the tension is so high, so unbearable that it's really our country is turning into an nightmare and it's such a plot twist, such a dark plot twist that we dreamt about democracy so long for so long, and that this longing for turned into something like this. Like, I always say that police society has a sort of, it's a sort of, we have a sort of society cancer. Like, after so many years, so many centuries of very dark history made people unable to be free. And this is what I would say. I know that this conversation doesn't allow us to develop this subject, but I think that my words are traumatic enough. There are and, as in Brecht said, you know when we live what do we write about in dark times what do we sing about he said we write and sing about the dark times as in the US, you know, also so many critical voices as everywhere as in Germany, there are artists who always have had the role in society, you know, to, to show strong problems to to discuss conflicts on a stage and a peaceful way in an open arena, and where people can make up their minds and and, and it's a celebration of free speech and that's why it's at the very core of democracy and that's why theater is so deeply connected to that idea and it's life in itself because we are part of nature in a play. Andres Weber, who we talked about philosopher German philosopher who said, you know, we, he sees theater as the expression of, of, of life of forces of lies in this chaotic world we live in. I can agree because theater is so. It's very avant garde is that it's very active it's able to contain on many very current things that are other genres are much more. There's more time to adapt, and the other is always very, but I think it's also treated trap because showing things, expressing things is not always doesn't doesn't always mean going deeper, like you need time to get deeper to see the whole picture and it's just a thing of theater that it's too, to current. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so, what are you, what are you working on that is screenplay now and then you say you will have to take a time off to recreate but what are your, your dreams as a little metal girl, which you are in a way and we're going to hear that monologue no matter how we tried but what are your dreams what are you thinking about what would you like to be and what would you like to write to write about or how to express it what are your your plans for the future. I never like. I don't like to show my plans. Because it's a sort of bias. And I think that you can adjust, burn down in this, you know, expressing the, them, but in past few weeks, I thought, madly about my, what I will do next in music. It's my obsession right now. Like I see that with this album that I published last month or two months ago, the whole world of this sort of expression opened in front of me. And now I, I'm really obsessed, but I will show and tell. When you, you said when you were, you know, that high school student and you didn't know which is which, or what is what in theater. What, what did you read what what were your influences, what were your, the music you listen to what. What, what was it is there a moment even where you said yes I will be a writer can you remember that. Yes, I am not not the exact moment. This I can't spot but I remember very well that since I learned how to write. This was my way of expression this was my second line that even yesterday, walking down the New York streets. I thought that so very early I developed this second life of mine that I live, but along with normal life. And notebooks I had my essays I have my writing and when I remember this, this years, just before I made my debut. I think it was. Before the snow white and Russian red is just parked with things that I had in my mind at the moment, which comes from a very classical literature. I think that this is the, this is the very huge mixture of this small town brutality of life, and, and classical literature, the did this sort of metaphors poetry, beauty of language. I think this was I was. What was the literature what did you read what was it. I remember very well that I was fascinated with Henry Miller, a nice name, this, this very. Can I say that they were literary impressionist. But along with it, there were this education system that I was part of so this was a history of Polish literature. This books that have to be known by every single Polish students, when you want to, when you, you prepare to your exams. So, but at the same time I think that I was listening a lot to a lot of music, and this is always a thing that I think about when I'm in New York that that I was obsessed with the listening to Sonic you. New York Manhattan based group. And this is the mixture I, I grew up in. Amazing amazing and you claim that heritage for you, you listened to what you were the moment you were in and you also anticipated in a way, a future and you wrote something, and something down as a as a as a as a singing poet and representing your country was that great tradition that great Polish tradition of literature poetry, and of course of theater and so very well and, and it's, you're so big honor and privilege to have you with us. Maybe we are coming to the end and and it's already over an hour but maybe we to us a little bit would love to hear your voice. I, I could read the short monologue of little metal girl from no matter how hard to be tried, which is very emblematic for, for, for, for give a little, give a little context what's happening when she is speaking that or what's about to happen. I think it's. I think that the whole play is built on her arguments with her grandmother. And they are discussing Poland, all the time in some way. And, and at some moment, little metal girl just explodes with a monologue about being Polish. If it was dying and gloomy old BD says of Poland glorious land I can still see your beauty dying. A little metal girl girl says, if it was dying and it should should have pop a couple of aspirin. Everybody knows Poland's the stupid country is poor and ugly. The architectures ugly, the weather is gloomy, the temperatures are cold, even the animals have run off to hide in the woods. The shows on TV are bad. The jokes aren't funny. The prime minister's look is the prime minister looks like a pumpkin, and the president looks like the prime minister. It's a joke about our president and prime minister being twins at the time at the time. And that's why the other one became so ugly and evil. In France, they have France in America, America, they have got America, Germany is Germany in Germany, and even the Czech Republic is Czech, but in Poland, all you get is Poland. In France, they have baguettes. In England, go talk. The Germans have roles, and in France, you get roles. But in Poland, it's bread, bread, bread. In France, they all speak French. They speak English in England, but in Poland occurs like everybody else does in Polish, which nobody understands. I have long since made up my mind that I'm not Polish, just European, and I learned the language from records and tapes left behind by the Polish cleaning lady. This here is not my mom, but our personal cis person from Tesco. She brings Tesco to our house on a tour please, and we just point out what we don't want, and she takes it back again, and how she skips around these corners. This is not our neighbor, but our private leaflet dispenser. She brings the underpass for our door and hands out leaflets there. She ignores them for us and throws them away around the next corner. She's so fat, we keep her locked up at home. Once have her wobbling around in normal people's slew of you. And this here is not my grandma. She's our cleaning lady. She's so old and transparent because she just rode in from Ukraine today in this wheelchair. And we exist on the best terms we can. There are no rules, that's normal false. We came to Poland from Europe to get good bio organic potatoes grown in real soil, not like those water ones from Tesco's, and we learned Polish from records and tapes. Bravo. Really, really, really thank you for for spending time with us and Christina also thank you for your presence for being with us and it was great to listen to you. And, and, and can't wait to see the play tonight as part of the rehearsal for the truce festival at the Bohemian National Hall, the Butzlap Havel Center and important venue I think so for global theater and especially center European theater. So, thank you all thanks to how around Talia and VJ for hosting us and the learner here at the Segal Center, and of course to our listeners who take time out of their busy lives. We did so many talks in the zoom time and there wasn't so much going on. And but now of course life is back for this is wonderful and and zoom is often not the best action but I think there is something to listen to these artists in a way what it is and it did go deep. What we heard today from daughter who is a great artist who is struggling as we also hear with her craft with her heritage with a country with a future with her work, and the medium she works in and so really, it was a moment where we felt at home, there's a little secure space a beautiful space just to listen to an artist and I think it made them world more meaningful and to all of us and more excited about what theater is about and the mystery behind that great great art form. Thank you very much, and I hope you all will come back to us to the upcoming Segal Docs thank you. Bye bye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.