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Dramaturgy and direction
Wera Makowskx i Jakub Zalasa
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Premiere
23 February 2023, TR Warszawa/Marszałkowska 8
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Duration
1 h 35 min.
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Tickets
Normal ticket: 70 PLN
Concessionary ticket: 50 PLN
The performance is appropriate for audiences aged 16 and over.
The performance contains sexual scenes.
Obsada
About the show
„sweet & romantic“ is a theatre performance about the things that people are capable of doing
out of love. Not the love that one wants to have, but the real love – based on the fight for
control. Painful, jealous and difficult, that comes in many human configurations. The love
that lasts months and years and does not end with a pretty, final picture after an hour and a
half of a movie screening.
It’s 2026. Ari loves passionately his late friend. He locks himself up at home so that he
doesn’t have to face the external world, which tells him how he should mourn and express his
feelings. As a form of experiment, he takes his first dose of testosterone and transcends the
traditional gender boundaries. Only a few closed ones are allowed inside his one-bedroom
sanctuary: his dog, his mother, partner, dealer and the remembrance of his late friend.
Everything they do in life, they do out of love. To feel loved. They pay a high price for their
greedy desire to be loved – the price of morphing identity.
Outside, the world powers are becoming more and more radical. Fundamentalism is trendy
again. Technological development is strictly and systematically regulated. Citizens don’t
have access to contraceptives, hormones and some other medicaments. Protest after protest
sweeps through the city. The crowds object to the strict control.
Ari, whose getting more and more fascinated by the testosterone, attempts to find an answer
to the following questions: How did the T particle form this world? If T isn’t responsible for
it all, then what is? What can be done to forget the exciting photo of a couple kissing in front
of a nuclear bomb mushroom cloud, while one undergoes a self-revolution?
The script was inspired by the works of Paul B. Preciaso, “Queer Art of Failure” by Jack
Halberstram, “The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love” by Bell Hooks and “The
Burnout Society” by Byung-Chul Han.
Creators
direction, script, dramaturgy: Wera Makowskx, Jakub Zalasa
scenography: Kalina Gałecka
costumes: Mateusz Matysek
lights: Kalina Gałecka, Wera Makowskx, Jakub Zalasa
visuals: Malwina Migacz
video: Wojciech Sobolewski
camera operators: Paweł Lipka, Wojciech Sobolewski
musical arrangement: Piotr Domiński
choreografia: Kasia Kuzka
directors’s assistant: Patrycja Węglarz
stage manager: Wojciech Sobolewski
production manager: Magda Igielska
photo: Joanna Gałuszka
Reviews
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A sad, very movie-like, staged to the beat of a perfectly selected music, story about
destructive love. Seemingly composed entirely of cliches, but it feels like all of them
were re-develop. Each of the ostensibly stereotypical characters: a non-binary
person who does not fit in the social molds, an artist who hides her mediocrity, a
toxic narcissist and eternal mother, is played in an extremely moving manner.
The performance is co-financed by the Stanisław Wyspiański Academy of Theatre Arts in Kraków as part of the Fund for Start programme.