jEsT  a MiNuTe WiTh Khush

jEsT  a MiNuTe WiTh Khush

jEsT  a MiNuTe WiTh Khush

jEsT  a MiNuTe WiTh Khush

Exhibit at the IT Fair

The Play
Balladyna and Alina are sisters who live with their mother in a poor hut in the middle of a forest. A nymph Goplana – the queen of the Gopło Lake – is in love with Balladyna’s beloved, Grabiec, and because of her jealousy she intervenes in peoples’ lives and changes their destiny. To the sisters’ hut comes a rich prince Kirkor, who was led there by Skierka, Goplana’s servant. Goplana wanted Kirkor to fall in love with Balladyna so that Grabiec could be just hers. However, Skierka made a mistake and Kirkor fell in love not only with Balladyna, but also Alina. In order to get a husband, the sisters compete with each other in collecting raspberries; the one who fills a pitcher first will marry Kirkor. When Balladyna finds out that Alina is winning, she kills her with a knife.
Director’s Note Balladyna becomes the Polish queen (“against contradictions and history,” as the author says). Her career is a band of crimes and lies, but also a hell of remorse and horror. She is constantly accompanied by the
belief that someone else controls her life. It was the enraged Goplana, the malicious sister, the possessive, the primitive mother, and in the background men obsessed with power. Although Slowacki’s work is almost 200 years old, the question of whether to stop the machine of evil and live honestly after reaching one’s dream destination remains as up-to-date. The world is changing: instead of legends, we have a virtual reality, instead of a sword, sophisticated tools of crime, but human feelings, ambitions, hatred and jealousy remain the same.

The Director
Katarzyna Deszcz is a graduate of the Faculty of Law at the Jagiellonian University and the Faculty of Direction in Drama at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. In 1982, together with her husband Andrzej Sadowski, she founded the Mandala theater group in Cracow, which exhibited nearly twenty experimental shows on stage in thirty-four countries. In the repertoire she has been directing since 1991, initially with her husband. In 1995, she collaborated with the Scarlet Theater in London, where she has been working on projects in England, Ireland and Scotland. She conducts workshops for directors and actors in theater centers in Poland, England, Egypt, India, Ireland, Japan, Germany and the USA. In 1993-94 she was a lecturer at the English Dartington College of Art in Devon. In the years 1999-2008 she was a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. The Playwright Juliusz Słowacki was a Polish Romantic poet. His works often feature elements of Slavic pagan traditions, Polish history, mysticism and orientalism. His style includes the employment of neologisms and irony. His primary genre was the drama, but he also wrote lyric poetry. His most popular works include the dramas Kordian and Balladyna and the poems Beniowski and Testament mój. The Group The Aleksander Węgierko Drama Theater, in Białystok, is the only facility of this sort in the Podlaskie Voivodship. Its main stage can hold as many as 500 audience members. Along with mainstream
productions, the group also has a selection of performances for young viewers i.e. adaptations of classic
literature for children as well as staging of contemporary fairy tales.

Cast & Credits

The Play
In Attends, Attends, Attends… (Pour Mon Père) the son has an imaginary exchange of thoughts with his father… a dialogue in which he bids his father to wait and be patient. He asks his father to open himself up to his son’s time. He asks his father to withdraw into his son in order to become a child again and prepare for death. The son reveals himself as Charon, the ferryman that prepares the father for the last passage. He knows death like none other. Like the performer he’s become, he’s a specialist in dying. Every night again he allows death and birth to come. Every night again he crosses the Styx, he is after all the accomplice of the spiritual, he awakens phantoms and sends them back to their heaven and hell from which they were born. He knows his role well, it is on, he has played it so often. Father will you join me?
For this solo, Jan Fabre was inspired by the life of Cédric Charron, a dancer with whom he has worked closely since As Long as the World Needs a Warrior’s Soul (2000). In this performance Jan Fabre explores the art of postponing. The postponement creates a reserve, an instant in which everything is still possible, in which you don’t have to make
choices yet. You reserve yourself in time, as well as in space: respite will also create a distance, will retreat upon itself in a movement of patience. There is something erotic even about postponement: opening oneself up for what is yet to come. But not quite yet.

The Director & Playwright
Jan Fabre is a graduate of the Municipal Institute of Decorative Arts and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. He is well known both at home and abroad as one of the most innovative and versatile artists of his generation. Over the past 30 years, he has produced works as a theatre maker, author and visual artist. Jan Fabre is renowned for expanding the horizons of every genre to which he applies his artistic vision. In the late 1970s, still very young, Jan Fabre
caused a furore as a performance artist.
He makes a clean break with the conventions of contemporary theatre by introducing the concept of ‘real-time performance’ – sometimes called ‘living installations’ – and explores radical choreographic possibilities as a means of resurrecting classical dance. Fabre has been writing his own plays since 1975, although it was not until 1989 that they were first performed. His recent 24-hour project Mount Olympus, to Glorify the Cult of Tragedy is
internationally praised as one of the most outstanding theatre productions of the last decade.

The Performer
Cédric Charron, born in Bretagne, France, completed his MA, and decided to study performance and dance at P.A.R.T.S in Brussels, in 1997. He started to work with Jan Fabre in 1999, and has performed many of Fabre’s works. He also collaborated onPreparatio Mortis, a solo for Annabelle Chambon, and dances in Pierre Coulibeuf’s filmLes Guerriers de la beauté. He founded the Label Cedana, together with Annabelle Chambon and collaborated with artists such as Boris Charmatz, William Forsythe, Thierry de Mey, Michèle Anne de Mey, Fatou Traoré, Filip Sangdor etc.

The Group
Troubleyn is a theatre company with an extensive international practice, and home base is Antwerp. Troubleyn's mission is two-fold: creating and presenting the stage work (theatre, dance …) and by extension coordinating research projects, book publications, films, lectures and giving shape to the working of the Troubleyn / Laboratory that houses both the rehearsal studios and the offices. This building not only functions as a rehearsal room and as a workplace for emerging talent, but also as a laboratory for independent research into body and language.

Cast & Credits