Fascinating, yet simultaneously fear-inducing. Non-normative, deviant, wreaking havoc, lying in wait for civilization. In Polish literature, he subversively strolled through the garden; in the works of the South African Nobel laureate, he was deconstructed; the most famous artists identified him with the "noble savage," while at other times seeing him as a monster, a menacing alien.

One thing is certain: the leitmotif of this year’s Divine Comedy is, in our culture, heavily masculinized. Do any female Barbarians exist, then? The festival program offers a surprising, affirmative answer. During one of the festival debates, together with invited guests, we pondered who the contemporary "barbarian" – whether male or female – actually is.

This has been one of the most enduring archetypes in Western culture; "barbaros" symbolized everything foreign and dangerous, eventually becoming a reflection of our own fears or obsessions. Although for the purpose of the meeting the "barbarian" took on a female form, in the collective consciousness, the figure is still associated with masculinity and the physical strength of fearsome warriors.

It is only contemporary culture that has begun to reclaim the female barbarian. While one looks in vain for female versions of Coetzee’s heroes, pop culture’s "Conan the Barbarian" has found counterparts in "Red Sonja" or the TV series "Xena: Warrior Princess."

Over time, researchers have developed a broader perspective. The female barbarian does not necessarily have to be a stereotypical warrior; more often, she is a valiant survivor or an economic migrant, often wearing a hijab. Alien, withdrawn, strange, engaging in atypical practices, she can be dangerous, but she always remains steadfast in the fight for her rights and freedom of belief.

There is no shortage of such heroines in this year’s festival program. From intellectuals to workers, eco-terrorists, and activists—here are the divine female Barbarians. In Paweł Miśkiewicz’s The Vegetarian, the protagonist’s rebellion is quiet, inconspicuous. Instead of fighting or screaming, the woman chooses to withdraw from the world, first by collapsing into herself, cutting off social and family life, until she achieves total fusion with nature.

In Katarzyna Kalwat’s story about the forgotten French philosopher, essayist, and Sorbonne professor Sarah Kofman, rebellion is also present. A friend of Derrida and Deleuze, she had to fight for herself and with herself constantly, making a ceaseless choice between identities—French and Jewish. This dualism and entanglement are perfectly captured in the play’s title: Kofman. Double Bind.

The masked, anonymous heroines of Spy Girls, directed by Magda Szpecht, are almost model examples of contemporary female Barbarians. The titular girls exploit human weaknesses and technological gaps to gain an advantage in a conflicted world. The performance is based on the real actions of cyberactivists supporting Ukraine.

For several months, young women seduced Russian soldiers to extract strategic information from them. Elements bordering on a thriller are also present in Monika Pęcikiewicz’s Hexes, a stage adaptation of Agnieszka Szpila’s loud and courageous novel. This feminist manifesto tells the story of the CEO of a fuel concern who, in a fit of a certain kind of madness, enters into an intimate relationship with a tree. Caught in this transgression, she loses everything and undergoes a deep transformation.

The 19th-century uprising of Silesian weavers described in the drama by Nobel laureate Gerhart Hauptmann becomes a pretext for a story about the contemporary exploitation of workers. In her The Weavers, Maja Kleczewska portrays people fighting not only for better working conditions but also for dignity. Among the protesters, there are several courageous female Barbarians.

A form of resistance, a refusal to be forgotten, was the literary phenomenon of recent years: Joanna Kuciel-Frydryszak’s Peasant Women (Chłopki). In Tomasz Cymerman’s interpretation, it is a tale of daily toil, class exclusion, and economic exploitation faced by rural women living in an extremely patriarchal society. Both the reportage and the play are attempts to restore dignity and justice to women for whom full emancipation seemed unattainable.

Check the full festival program to meet all the divine heroines of this year’s edition.

Disclaimer: This content has been translated automatically.