An Imperfect Utopia

Tickets
Address ul. Marszałkowska 8, Warszawa
Entry 40–150 PLN
Venue's website www.trwarszawa.pl
Director Noémi Ola Berkowitz
Release 2022
Author Martyna Wawrzyniak

Performing: Stefan Merki, Edith Saldanha, Tomasz Tyndyk, Justyna Wasilewska

In this world in this world of meticulously constructed gender norms, do people even have a chance to be themselves? Is everything that has been instilled in us since childhood as “natural behavior” not only oppression for those who deviate from cultural norms, but also a prison for us all? Can we dream of a world without shame and stigma? With a love of freedom for all, instead of power for the select few?


These are the questions artists explore in the German-Polish performance project An Imperfect Utopia, directed by Noémi Ola Berkowitz. The ensemble – two actors from the Munich Kammerspiele, two actors from TR Warszawa, and one performer from the ballroom community – will jointly research various strategies to shake off histories of oppression and problematic mechanisms.

An Imperfect Utopia is an immersive theater evening in which performers and spectators draw close to one another. Not only social norms will be questioned, but also theatrical norms. The audience will be onstage with the performers and a DJ will design sound and drop beats live. The performance form, workshopped at the Sopot Non Fiction Theater Festival in 2021, is influenced by the underground drag performance and ballroom scenes, where the line between spectator and participant is blurred. A hybrid of liberation and camp, of intimate confessions, queer theory and private enlightenment, of lies and truths, of various languages and their moments of failure – an evening in which impossible dreams emerge in all their extravagant glory. Martyna Wawrzyniak will develop the text after a joint research with the ensemble, in which all the various perspectives come to light: city and country, Poland and Germany, dialogue and dance, public and private, shameful and proud, older and younger, binary and nonbinary.

This production marks the first joint production created in the artistic partnership between TR Warszawa and the Munich Kammerspiele. Both theaters are committed to experimental exploration of new forms as well as contemporary material. Die Wirklichkeit nicht in Ruhe lassen – "do not leave reality alone“ – is the motto with which the Kammerspiele’s new artistic directing team began their work in 2020. An Imperfect Utopia is also a part of TR Warszawa’s season called turn on the full spectrum programmed as well along queer culture topics.

script: Martyna Wawrzyniak, Viola Hasselberg, Rania Mleihi
stage design: Miriam Pleines
costumes: Florian Budermusic
DJ: Trace Polly Müller
light: Charlotte Marr
video: Jake Witlen
production MK: Angelika Koch
production assistant: Claudia Kaunzne
production TR: Magdalena Igielska
direction and dramaturgy intern: Carolin Bernklau
stage design intern: Mara Yakuba
costume design intern: Liz Bromberger
stage manager: Stefanie Rendtorff
surtitles: Yvonne Griesel
technical manager: Jonas Pim Simon

Performances tagged English-friendly feature English surtitles.

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