A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end.
(Albert Camus, from the script of the play)

The story of the loss of independence is, to a considerable degree, the story of national trauma, which is both a construct of the collective consciousness and a subjective experience filtered through individual perception. The clash between these two experiences – social and private – gave rise to The Present State of the World.

This focus on the individual was the way of perceiving independence chosen by Karol Klugowski – a composer and director who uses an avant-garde form to depict the role of the artist taking the floor to speak about the most pressing political and social issues. Drawing from the theatre of Bogusław Schaeffer, the actors (Błażej Peszek, Przemysław Przestrzelski, Mikołaj Kubacki) grapple with the substance of their own bodies, which here, on stage, become instruments ground in the gears of History.

This play (…) primarily strives for a metaphorical depiction of a reality that affects us all, to some degree. By this I mean memory of the catastrophes of the twentieth century; the memory of two world wars and everything that constitutes the trauma they left behind.
(Karol Klugowski, from the program)

This play was selected from the Młodzi w Starym competition organized by the National Stary Theatre, in cooperation with the S. Wyspiański Theatre Academy in Krakow.