On April 12 at 7 pm “Acropolis”, a play based on the work of Stanisław Wyspiański and directed by Łukasz Twarkowski, will be accessible online via the National Stary Theater YouTube channel (click here). It will be presented with English subtitles.

The creators of this visually unique production viewed the famous play as if it were a disk containing data from the past, and the motifs and themes preserved on it that are the most essential for our civilization underwent a conversion, a certain cultural process of recycling: “Wyspiański’s Greek mythology and Old Testament are replaced by science, technology, form. […] On the stage, we don’t see any of the misterium which Wyspiański wanted, we only bear witness to the trance that the actors fall into, plunged into motionlessness, into self-examination. It’s a strange state in which a body dissolves in a reality composed of images, sounds and surfaces. Twarkowski puts emphasis on two of the play’s motifs: he examines the brotherly relations between Hector and Paris, and between Jacob and Esau, and contrasts them with the father figures (Priam and Isaac). Suddenly, from beneath the mythological and biblical ornamentation, characters emerge who are trying to understand who they are and why they exist,” wrote Łukasz Drewniak in Dziennik Polski.

The play […] begins with a fratricidal shot fired by biblical Esau into the head of Jacob, and the context for Wyspiański’s vision (spun on his deathbed) becomes the death of a mind, of a person, and – more broadly – of humanity along with the civilization it has created. Nowadays, the largest cemetery and shrine of the past, an equivalent to a cathedral, is the internet – a civilization’s memory consists of megabytes on servers. […] Apparitions/memories/avatars/programs wander around this world-unworld. They replay and repeat different variations of the past. They have no future. Aneta Kyzioł, Polityka