The most recent production of the Kana Theatre is a stage narrative about the mechanisms of memory and human attitude to the past. It tells talks about the catastrophe of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986. The performance recalls the experience of the drama of thousands of people described by the Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich - a drama that occurred just beyond the eastern border of Poland. At the same time it is an attempt to understand the human condition after any explosion, war, apocalypse, or catastrophe. It is an attempt to answer the question: How to rebuild one’s life? How to draw positive, constructive conclusions from tragic experiences? 

 The stage choral tale explores the condition of the world and the psyche of a human being after the explosion, a human being crushed by the burden of the difficult past, functioning in a cloud of images and sentences attached on the way and brought here and now.

based on “Chernobyl Prayer. Chronicles of the Past” by Svetlana Alexievich

directed and adopted by: Krzysztof Popiołek 

stage design ​: Anna Wołoszczuk 

costumes: Piotr Popiołek

cast: Bibianna Chimiak, Karolina Sabat, Dariusz Mikuła, Piotr Starzyński

technicians: Piotr Motas, Adam Dzidziszewski, Tomasz Grygier

music: „Midnight With The Stars” (music and lyrics: Campbell James, Connelly Reginald, Woods Harry M.), „Awake, Oh Awake My Joel” (music: Hillman Jon), „Iron Sky” (music and lyrics: Chaplin Charles, Nelson Dawid John William, Nutini Paolo Giovanni), „Waltz” (music: Ginko Evgeny)

photos: Bartek Warzecha

premiere: June 2017

duration: 80 min

 

Fragments of reviews: 

How translate into language of theatre the masterpiece of non-fiction literature: the paralyzing and traumatic „Chernobyl Prayer” by Belarusian Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich? How to stage it and later how to perform it wisely, beautifully, and dignifiedly? (...) The Kana Theatre has the means to do it. The group consists of experienced actors and their experiences are conducive to the fulfilment of this dream. Their Chernobyl’s tales, carefully arranged by the director Krzysztof Popiołek in an irregular narrative composition for four voices, sound as horribly and devastatingly as they should, accompanied by a diverse musical background and film images projected onto the two screens on the back wall. From time to time this Cassandrian narrative is interrupted by invigorating sequences of frenetic, exhausting, unstoppable dance, which is a salutary symptom of the revitalizing and healing chorea that overcomes for a while the inevitable trauma. (Juliusz Tyszka, „Nietak!t”)

(...) the motion appears when the characters can speak no more, as if they discovered that there are no words that could describe their experience. This crazy, individual dance is very physical, exhausting, as if the characters in their emaciation wanted to recover from traumas evoked by words. (...) This desperate dance is a really shocking, perhaps because the torrents of words – wise, right, horrible words which flood us – simultaneously immunize us for what they convey? The actors of the Kana Theatre show an embodied despair, and perhaps that’s how they reach the audience more directly (...). (Joanna Ostrowska, teatralny.pl)

Formally, it is a collection of extremely personal monologues of the victims of Chernobyl. They were greatly combined to form a rhythmic melody, with thoughtful chapters distinguished by gestures or repetitions. The “looped” elemental dance – providing the rhythm to the performance – was a very good idea; dancing interludes are necessary pauses, and – perhaps because of the gravity of the subject matter – they offer catharsis, not only for the characters, but also for the audience. (...) The young director’s proposal if far away from clichés of reportage theatre, so fashionable today; it gives a new, fresh and explicit form to this genre. The performance is very sad, but also very cleansing (catharsis not only in the dance scene). (Daniel Źródlewski, „Prestiż”)