Orson Welles’s famous film of 1941, “Citizen Kane,” is the story of an American press mogul, the model for whom was William Randolph Hearst, a man who was unafraid to flaunt his wealth and his Republican views. “Ms Citizen Kane,” a play by Jolanta Janiczak and Wiktor Rubin, is inspired by the story of his granddaughter. This twenty-year-old student, Patty Hearst, was kidnapped in 1974 by the covert SLA group, known for its left-wing terrorism, and ended up joining its ranks in robbing a bank and other acts targeting the social order established, among others, by her own family. The play’s authors use this story to look at the mechanisms disabling people from acknowledging their own emotions, motivations, and desires. The old forms of culture—represented by the works of art being carted away in the last scene of Welles’s “Citizen Kane”—are unable to express today’s tangled, repressed, and contradictory emotions and feelings, in which we feel lost, for which we are forever seeking expression, to better understand ourselves and our reality. Like a chameleon, Patty Hearst finds her feet perfectly both as an heir to a fortune and as a terrorist struggling against her family’s inheritance. Unlike her grandfather, she promoted a civil activism, as there was no longer time to wait for reality to fix itself.

“I want witnesses, not people,” says Marta Ścisłowicz. The participatory nature of this play coincides beautifully with its effect. The performance provokes viewers by letting them shout their frustrations into a microphone, leaving their comfy seats and climbing on stage, to join the dreamers of a better tomorrow. (…) The audience is made aware of their anxieties, their inhibitions, neglect, and hypocrisy. This is indeed unpleasant, it means leaving your comfort zone. But Tadeusz Kantor had a point when he said no one could enter the theatre with impunity…

Zofia Kowalska, TEATR DLA WSZYSTKICH

The performance is intended for adult audiences.

In the play, there is nudity as well as themes of violence and terrorism. Actors engage in direct interaction with the audience. A large amount of artificial weapons appear on stage.