Scena Robocza Fest: Dziewczyny opisują świat

Girls Describe the World by Aleksandra Jakubczak as part of Scena Robocza Fest at Komuna Warszawa.

Girls Describe the World is a performance about the formation of the female subject and various models of femininity, functioning and passed down through generations of Polish women. Treating gift and encounter as creative methods, the artist took as her starting point the girls' diaries given to her and a series of meetings, discussions and workshops with girls and young women around the collection of notes. The directly recorded experiences of growing up became the basis for a story about the world as seen from the perspective of the emerging female subject. Rawness, vitality, clumsiness, honesty, a multitude of emotions, but also humour - girlish energy transferred from the pages of the diaries into the space of the theatre.

The diaries offer a confessional, intimate narrative, for the authors they are often the first space of their own, opened, reclaimed, expanded. Recorded directly, the process of self-discovery, the search for or failure to find language, reflects the wider mechanisms of the production and reproduction of models of femininity and female roles. I am interested in this formative process and in placing it in the light of feminist empowerment, the reclaiming of position, the assertion of symbolic power. Memoirs speak to us without intermediary, they do not need authority, hierarchy, consent and sanction. Memoir writing is beyond hierarchies and authority, thus gaining subversive value against mainstream narratives and the patriarchal order. Part of the material will also include my own diaries, which I want to give away on an equal basis with the other, donated notebooks. Wanting to open up the space of someone's privacy, its presentation and representation, I cannot leave myself out," says director Aleksandra Jakubczak.

set design: Jana Łączyńska

consultants: Zofia Krawiec, Katarzyna Sikora

sound: Grażyna Biedroń

production: Centrum Rezydencji Teatralnej Scena Robocza

This performance will be presented in Polish with no surtitles.