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© Françoise Robert
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© Françoise Robert
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© Françoise Robert
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© Françoise Robert
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© Maurycy Stankiewicz
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© Maurycy Stankiewicz
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© Maurycy Stankiewicz
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© Maurycy Stankiewicz
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© Maurycy Stankiewicz
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© Maurycy Stankiewicz
She was a friend of someone else
Gosia Wdowik / NOWY TEATR & CAMPO
She was a friend of someone else was made in a country where women have limited access to reproductive health, and where abortion is now illegal. Despite immense protests, women were simply denied their rights. The project started with the idea that women could come together and, without shame or fear, publicly manifest that they’ve had an abortion, and that this collective act would change the law.
It could be an activist success story.
But She was a friend of someone else is a story with too many beginnings, too few endings – and an exhausted narrator.
In this creation, Gosia Wdowik explores the link between burnout and activism: the fear that rights are not acquired forever, and that the moment one lowers the attention, they risk disappearing. Through a personal narrative, she describes the commitment to women's rights in Poland. Through subtle choreography, we are drawn into the life of a woman who decides one day, instead of protesting, to stay in bed, only to eventually come out again.
Premiere: 20, 21, 22 & 23 May 2023 - Brussels, Kunstenfestivaldesarts
She was a friend of someone else is part of a research based on I’ll just say it and see what happens created by TERAZ POLIŻ (Marta Jalowska, Dorota Glac, Kamila Worobiej), Martyna Wawrzyniak & Gosia Wdowik, which was premiered on 21st December 2021.
In English & Polish
Duration: +- 60 minutes
press
This delicately structured, understated production plays with questions of truth, pretence and shame
Theatre is an interesting place for checking out things and doing a bit more than in reality. It’s a place of potential for me.
She was a friend of someone else raises issues we rarely think about yet.
Wdowik invites us into a sluggish, dense and torpid world made of spilled glasses, heavy limbs and even heavier bedcovers in which everything is literally fuming with exhaustion.
Poignant to see how role-affirming increasing conservatism is; how women must constantly fight for their position and freedom. In She was a friend of someone else, Wdowik exposes it as alarmingly as it is disillusioned.
With a powerful dramaturgy and a minimalist direction, Polish theatre-maker Gosia Wdowik explores the link between burnout and activism.
How do you keep fighting for something that can disappear at any moment?
credits
concept, text & direction Gosia Wdowik collaboration in dramaturgy Maria Rössler visuals & creative technology Jimmy Grimma set design Dominika Olszowy & Tomasz Mróz light design Aleksandr Prowaliński performed by Oneka von Schrader, Gosia Wdowik & Jaśmina Polak concept & implementation of the theatrical reconstruction of the collective abortion coming out TERAZ POLIŻ (Marta Jalowska, Dorota Glac, Kamila Worobiej), Martyna Wawrzyniak & Gosia Wdowik work with/by Agnieszka, Dominika, Jaśmina, Ania, Urszula, Marta K., Justyna, Natalia, Julia, Martyna, Ola, Małga, Krystyna, Marta, Zosia, Edka, Doris, Yulia, Agata, Kinga, Beata, Iza, Zuza, Ewa & Magda special thanks to Jan Tomza-Osiecki, Marta Jalowska, Dorota Glac, Kamila Worobiej, Martyna Wawrzyniak, Marta Nawrot, Keerthi Basavarajaiah & Justin Schembri production NOWY TEATR (Warsaw) & CAMPO (Ghent) coproduction Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Teatro Municipal do Porto, SPRING (Utrecht), Frascati Producties (Amsterdam), HELLERAU – Europäisches Zentrum der Künste (Dresden), Spielart (Munich), Dublin Theatre Festival & Beursschouwburg (Brussels), Points communs - Nouvelle Scène nationale de Cergy-Pontoise / Val d'Oise