About

These women were called “traitors to the country”, “collaborators”, and “renegades”. They were guilty of having intimate relations with German soldiers during the occupation. Actresses, singers, movie and cabaret stars. Did they really deserve the infamy and punishment meted out by the resistance? What were their motivations? Do we have the moral right to judge them today?


Director Jedrzej Piaskowski and playwright Magda Fertacz attempt to examine the issue of treason and collaborationism from the perspective of personal memories. The script is inspired i.e. with a true story of Maria Malicka, a prominent pre-war Warsaw actress for whom the theatre at 8 Marszalkowska Street was built. Accused of having collaborated with the Germans, the artist was banned from performing in Warsaw after the war. Another inspiration for the play is Arletta, or rather Leonie Bathiat, a famous French movie and theatre actress of the 1930s and 1940s, who had had wartime liaisons with German officers and as a consequence she had been imprisoned for some time, before relaunching her career as a national star. The creators allude also to the story of Deutsches Filmtheater operating during the German occupation of Poland in the building of Teatr Rozmaitości, and Mon Café, the establishment in Aleje Jerozolimskie before and during WWII frequented by Warsaw’s homosexuals (male and female).

While constructing a theatrical fantasy about wartime, the artists are posing several questions about the stigmatization, punishment and judgment of individuals who, for a variety of reasons, renounced heroism and refused to fight and make sacrifices for their country during the occupation. How is historical memory and moral evaluation of past choices and actions constructed? What are the limits of interpreting and fantasizing about history that is charged with trauma and heroism? How can collective memory be healed? 


For organized post-gymnasium school groups we offer introductory workshops to the performance (please contact the education department edukacja@trwarszawa.pl for more details).

Cast

Justyna

Wasilewska

Agnieszka

Żulewska

Lech

Łotocki

Sebastian

Pawlak

Creators:

Production

Gallery

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Magda Hueckel photo

Reviews

• “For organized post-gymnasium school groups we offer introductory workshops to the performance (please contact the education department edukacja@trwarszawa.pl for more details).”
  

  Wiktoria Wojtyra, Kultura Liberalna

• “From her first monologue, Justyna Wasilewska captivates the audience with every uttered word. Agnieszka Żulewska delivers her best performance since “The Exhausted” at Nowy Theatre and Sebastian Pawlak and Leszek Łotocki are very convincing despite being cast in roles that are quite unusual for them.”
  

  Wiesław Kowalski, “Teatr dla Was”

• “The world of “Puppenhaus. Treatment” is not black-and-white. Neither is it white-and-red. At times it is pink, at times it is all the colours of the rainbow. Let it be any colour it wants to be, as the personal and historical narratives, increasingly censored in the current political climate, are set free in Piaskowski’s and Fertacz’s production.”
  

  Anka Herbut, Dwutygodnik.com

• “This has to be one of the most surprising productions of recent months: a sort of macabre comedy on trauma. (…) Piaskowski’s rendition is at its strongest when it operates in the realm of imagination rather than in a specific historical context.”
  

  Witold Mrozek, Gazeta Wyborcza

• “What treatment does Fertacz and Piaskowski want to serve us? They want to heal us from clinging to traumas as if they are the foundation of Polish identity construct.”
  

  Joanna Puzyna-Chojka, sztukawspolczesna.org

Awards

• 13th Contemporary Polish Theatre Festival R@port in Gdynia

  Grand Prix for “Puppenhaus. Treatment” by Magda Fertacz, directed by Jędrzej Piaskowski

• 24th National Competition for Staging Contemporary Polish Plays

  Individual Actress Awards granted to Justyna Wasilewska and Agnieszka Żulewska for their roles in “Puppenhaus. Treatment” directed by Jędrzej Piaskowski

• 24th National Competition for Staging Contemporary Polish Plays

  Best Script Award granted to Magda Fertacz for the script to “Puppenhaus. Treatment”

Acknowledgement

Special thanks to dr. Joanna Ostrowska from the Faculty of History at the Jagiellonian University for suggesting and providing information on the play  “Doll from the bed no. 21” by Djordje Lebović.

The New Talents Line/TR Debut

The performance was produced within the frame of TR DEBUT Award, established in November 2015 in TR Warszawa. The award is announced annually at the Young Directors Forum in Cracow held by the AST National Academy of Theatre Arts in Cracow. The award programme is intended to support artistic development of young theatre creators. Directors awarded the prize are invited to stage a performance in TR Warszawa in the following theatre season.


So far,  the TR DEBUT programme the following performances have been produced:  “Puppenhaus. Treatment” based on Magda Fertacz’s text, directed by Jędrzej Piaskowski (2017), “The Chinese” inspired by Jean-Luc Godard’s movie scripts and Dostoyevsky’s “Demons”, directed by Klaudia Hartung-Wójciak (2018), “Woyzeck” by Georg Büchner, directed by Grzegorz Jaremko (2019), “STREAM” text by Katarzyna Minkowska and Tomasz Walesiak, directed by Katarzyna Minkowska (2020).

TR Debut is one of the elements of the NEW TALENTS LINE programme. TR Warszawa for many years now has been promoting new artistic talents through such projects as:  Warsaw Area [orig.: Teren Warszawa], TR/PL, Field TR [orig.: Teren TR], Young TR [orig.: Młody TR], TR Debut [orig.: Debiut TR], artistic residencies, guest showings of diploma works and performances, repertoire showings of performances co-created by new artists and production of selected projects in cooperation with foreign partners. TR Warszawa provides artistic shelter, where artists may experiment and implement their ideas for theatre. 

Within the NEW TALENTS LINE in the past artistic seasons, the following directors presented their productions: Wojciech Blecharz (“Soundwork”), Klaudia Hartung-Wójciak (“The Chinese”), Grzegorz Jaremko (“Woyzeck”), Katarzyna Kalwat (“Holzwege”, “Rechnitz. Opera – The Exterminating Angel”, “Maria Klassenberg. Ecstasies”, “Staff Only” – coproduced by Biennale Warszawa and TR Warszawa), Anna Karasińska (“Ewelina’s Crying” and “Fantasia”), Katarzyna Minkowska (“Stream”), Jędrzej Piaskowski (“Puppenhaus. Treatment”, “David Is Going To Israel”), Piotr Trojan (“Grind/r”), Magda Szpecht (“The Possibility of an Island”, “Always Coming Home”), and Małgorzata Wdowik (“The Footballers” and “Fear”).