Rehearsals for "The Trap" have started

Gabriel Gietzky started rehearsing "The Trap" by Tadeusz Różewicz at Wrocławski Teatr Współczesny. The drama, written in 1982, is based on the life of Franz Kafka, a writer who foreboded the tragic course of history, and did not became famous until after his death. Yet, as the author emphasises, it is not a biographical play. "The Trap" is a story of a sensitive person constrained by anxiety and father complex.

While creating dark, enigmatic works, Franz Kafka was not devoid of a peculiar sense of humour: there are accounts of how he laughed loudly, reading fragments of “The Trial” to his friends. During the first rehearsal, Gabriel Gietzky underlined that aspect of his personality which is going to be present in the play as well.

 

From the left: composer Aleksandra Gryka, set designer Dominika Skaza, director Gabriel Gietzky and (in the foreground) actors Dariusz Maj and Bolesław Abart

Bartosz Woźny will play the role of Franz, his friend Max will be acted by Piotr Łukaszczyk, and his fiancée Felice, by Anna Kieca. Bolesław Abart will play the role of the Father, and Łucja Burzyńska - the one of Felice's Mother. We will see 21 actors on stage, among them Elżbieta Golińska, Irena Rybicka, Katarzyna Z. Michalska, Krzysztof Kuliński, Jerzy Senator and Krzysztof Boczkowski.

 

The opening is planned for mid-March 2010.

"The text of The Trap is ripening in my imagination. Its images become more and more thoroughgoing and painful. It grows into a human epic of outplacement, unfitness. (...)

Kafka's work was created before World War I and it anticipated the existence of a state machine grinding everything it finds on its way. Kafka leaves us to that, in the state that Modris Eksteins, in „The Rite of Spring” calls vexation, anxiety and insecurity. The world is tired. Then comes another perspective, the one of Różewicz, author of „The Survivor”. He looks from the perspective after World War II, in which he actively took part, and he writes „The Trap” being deeply aware of the Holocaust experience. We tackle the subject today, after the events of 11 September, that showed the fragility of the liberal-democratic-capitalist status quo to global society; when Fukuyama announces the end of history and man, when – after Berman and Marx „everything constant is vanishing into thin air”. The world is finished. How to tell it? The eschatological perspective seems unavoidable. As if we were telling about the world after the end of the world, without slipping into triviality and kitsch. (…)"

Gabriel Gietzky