The TR Début Award, presented nine times already, has provided support for emerging theatre makers, offering them an opportunity to create an original production on one of Poland’s key stages. This year’s winner is Krzysztof Zygucki – a directing student at the AST National Academy of Theatre Arts in Kraków, whose work has already been presented at the Boska Komedia / Divine Comedy Festival and the Klasyka Żywa Festival. His production, TRZASK PRASK, is based on Dwie powieści ruchu  / Two Motion Novels by Mateusz Górniak, one of the most fascinating young Polish writers and playwrights, who has worked with i.a. Grzegorz Jaremko and Michał Borczuch. The cast include, beside the acclaimed TR Warszawa actors Izabella Dudziak and Jan Dravnel, students and recent graduates of Kraków’s AST.

The condition of the characters in the play can be defined by two words: crisis and motion. Their world is shaped by overlapping crises; they inhabit a post-reality – a realm of social media, fleeting relationships, and psychoactive substances and the temporary states of comfort those bring. They have nothing to lose, and when you’ve nothing to lose, there’s always a chance of gaining something. The characters of TRZASK PRASK set out on a journey, and remain on the constant move. Zygucki’s production is a quest for a theatrical language capable of expressing how his generation experience reality; and that generation has been raised in the perpetual shadow of an apocalypse, and that has struggled to find their bearings in this world trembling in its foundations, even if they don’t necessarily think of inhabiting any place within it permanently. That is now being quite unlikely. It is the motion that matters now.

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Photo by Adrian Lach