Retard
Director:
Text author:
Malina Prześluga
Duration:
60' (no intermission)

After the second performance, we invite you to a meeting with the creators, led by Katarzyna Niedurny.

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Malina Prześluga’s drama Debil /Retard is one of the first Polish texts whose main protagonist is a man with intellectual disability. The playwright lets 40-year-old man speak and uses his words and eyes to show us a world that does not understand the needs and sensitivity of people with disabilities.

Debil /Retard shows the mechanism of exclusion of social groups capable of triggering acts of rebellion born of resentment for the wrongs and humiliations that those groups experience, cover up and suppress. On the other hand, it portrays the hypocrisy of contemporary elites, the well-hidden contempt for the excluded masked with assorted campaigns, supportive slogans, and financial benefits that give them – the elites, the celebrities – nothing save for a feel-good factor and media hype.

Even though it speaks through the mouth of a person with disabilities, Debil / Retard depicts the lack of empathy and the derision of “healthy society” rather than the inner thoughts of the hero, who refers to himself as “an idiot created for the needs of the moment”.

The production is an attempt at giving the floor to a man with disabilities with, however, an awareness that the world of his imagination and sensitivity remains inaccessible to us.

Section Biała strzałka w prawo
Purgatorio
Premiered on 8 October 2021
Piotr Ratajczak
music director
Tomasz Lewandowski
composer
Marcin Chlanda
sets, costumes, lights
Arkadiusz Buszko
stage movement
Bartłomiej Oskarbski
stage manager
Izabella Oleś
producer
Cast:
Bożena Adamek
Dominika Feiglewicz
Alina Szczegielniak
Grzegorz Łukawski
Antoni Milancej
Rafał Szumera