“Population density. The story of an explosion” of the Kana Theatre is a narrative about the mechanisms of memory and the attitude of humans to the past. It tells about the catastrophe of the Chernobyl nu clear power plant in 1986. Recalling the experience of the drama of thousands of people described by the Nobel Prize Winner SvetlanaAlexievich – the drama that occurred just behind the eastern border of Poland– the Kana’s performance is an attempt to understand the human condition after the explosion, after the war, the apocalypse, the catastrophe. It is an attempt to answer the question: How to restore one’s life? How to draw positive, constructive conclusions from a tragic experience? The story, told on stage by several voices, in the likeness of a choir, investigates the condition of the world and human psyche after an explosion – psyche of a man crushed by the burden of a difficult past and existing in a cloud of images and sentences-memories that stuck to him during a long journey and which he has brought with him here and now.
The performance is performed in Polish with the option of displaying subtitles in English
The performance won the first prize as part of the 12th edition of the International "Naked Theater" Award. Teresa Pomodoro in Milan 2021. The acting team consisting of: Bibianna Chimiak, Karolina Sabat, Dariusz Mikuła and Piotr Starzyński received the ARTISTIC PRIZE OF THE CITY OF SZCZECIN for significant artistic achievements in 2021. Winner of the Audience Award at TopOFFFest in Tychy, 2019. Nominated for the "Amber Ring" 2017, in the category of the season presentation.
“Population density. The story of an explosion”
based on “Chernobylskaya molitva” by Svetlana Alexievich, the book available in two English translation English: Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Keith Gessen (US) and Chernobyl Prayer: A Chronicle of the Future by Anna Gunin and Arch Tait (UK)
Polish to English translation of the script by Andrzej Wojtasik
directed and adopted by: Krzysztof Popiołek
stage design by: Anna Wołoszczuk
costumes by: Piotr Popiołek
cast: Bibianna Chimiak, Karolina Sabat, Dariusz Mikuła, Piotr Starzyński
production manager: Piotr Motas
light, sound and multimedia: Piotr Motas & Krzysztof Nowak
premiere: June 3-4, 2017
production: The Kana Theatre, Szczecin (Poland)
THE REVIEWS
…motion appears when the characters cannot speak anymore, as if they were discovering that there are no words that could describe their experience. This crazy, individual dance is very physical, exhausting, as if the characters wanted to react with their exhaustion to what the words evoke (...) Their self-destructing dance is really shocking, perhaps because the flux of words – wise, right, terrible, and flooding us – at the same time make us immune to what they transmit? The Kana’s actors show the embodied desperation and despair, probably for this reason it reaches the viewer more directly…
Joanna Ostrowska, teatralny.pl
Formally, itis a collection of extremely personal monologues of the victims of Chernobyl. The monologues are brilliantly combined to make a rhythmic melody, with thoughtful framing devices such as gestures or repetitions. It was a very good idea to introduce a looped scene of an impulsive dance, which not only provide rhythm to the performance, but also acted as a needed pause, and perhaps – due to severity of the story – as catharsis, not only for the characters, but also for the viewers. . . . The young director does not repeat the worn out stage devices belonging to the “reportage theatre”,the most recentfashion; he adds a new, fresh and expressive form to it. The performance is very sad, yet at the same time very cathartic (catharsis not only in the dance scene).
Daniel Źródlewski, „Prestiż”
The production by Krzysztof Popiołek – the director and author of the adaptation – refers, in keeping with the character of the stage, to the good traditions of alternative theatre, in which important social and political problems took the form of a lively, open staging with a collective protagonist and a passionate, topical message. This is what Population Density is like – an intense performance, full of motion and passion, and at the same time formally disciplined, in which individual voices combine to form a kind of a choir: of victims, but also of witnesses of the Chernobyl disaster – one could say: heirs to this unique tragedy. This collective story is not, however, limited by its experience. On the contrary, Popiołek and his team – consisting of four Kana’s actors: Bibianna Chimiak, Karolina Sabat, Dariusz Mikuła, Piotr Starzyński – tell us about an experience that goes beyond the nuclear power plant disaster in Ukraine. What is at stake is the experience of a catastrophe as such, inscribed in the recent history of our civilisation – wars, natural disasters (which are, by the way, the effects of human activity) – and the spectre of destruction hanging over it. Just like the post-explosion cloud suspended above the stage...
Artur Daniel Liskowacki „Kurier Szczeciński”
more information about performance
Protagonists of Alexievich’s tales are lost in time. They are cracked and inaccurately assembled, they constantly compare themselves-now and themselves-in-the-past, yet they are able to see the things penetratingly. The problem is that their view is an Orpheus-like: he looked backward, they look into the skull, into themselves. Their eyes meet the ruthless gaze of Medusa, the lost time which threatens to return. They are afraid that although the past has gone and it is already unrecoverable. Their bodies cooled long time ago, they heads are still drying after the dance of the last day of the summer – in the world before the explosion. Once a head used to sweat out, nowadays it sweats in. Moreover, there is a fear that the past may become the future again. These people became carriers of trauma, sensitive to catastrophe. They are prophets of new threats. The stage choral tale explores the condition of the world and the psyche of a human being after the explosion, a human being crushed by the burden of the difficult past, functioning in a cloud of images and sentences attached on the way and brought here and now.
The performance is a tribute to the victims who died in the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The script is based on a text by Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich. The scene in which we use the musical piece "Iron Sky" is a situation in which the characters of the stories reach their limit moment. They are reminded of the past, cruel memories, and in order to get rid of it, they lose themselves in a "madness" dance, to get tired and stop remembering. This dance allows you to invoke the will to live at a time when there is a threat that life will end prematurely. This music is important to us, thanks to the emotional layers it contains, it allows us to reach extreme emotions in terms of acting. This music is like a hymn that you want to sing to the crumbling world, it gives you strength to come back to life.
The production was accomplished realized thanks to the scholarship of the
Marshal of the West Pomeranian Voivodship.
 |
The performance qualified for the final of the competition for the best performance of independent theater. |
POBIERZ
ZDJĘCIA
“Population density. The story of an explosion” of the Kana Theatre is a narrative about the mechanisms of memory and the attitude of humans to the past. It tells about the catastrophe of the Chernobyl nu clear power plant in 1986. Recalling the experience of the drama of thousands of people described by the Nobel Prize Winner SvetlanaAlexievich – the drama that occurred just behind the eastern border of Poland– the Kana’s performance is an attempt to understand the human condition after the explosion, after the war, the apocalypse, the catastrophe. It is an attempt to answer the question: How to restore one’s life? How to draw positive, constructive conclusions from a tragic experience? The story, told on stage by several voices, in the likeness of a choir, investigates the condition of the world and human psyche after an explosion – psyche of a man crushed by the burden of a difficult past and existing in a cloud of images and sentences-memories that stuck to him during a long journey and which he has brought with him here and now.
The performance is performed in Polish with the option of displaying subtitles in English
The performance won the first prize as part of the 12th edition of the International "Naked Theater" Award. Teresa Pomodoro in Milan 2021. The acting team consisting of: Bibianna Chimiak, Karolina Sabat, Dariusz Mikuła and Piotr Starzyński received the ARTISTIC PRIZE OF THE CITY OF SZCZECIN for significant artistic achievements in 2021. Winner of the Audience Award at TopOFFFest in Tychy, 2019. Nominated for the "Amber Ring" 2017, in the category of the season presentation.
“Population density. The story of an explosion”
based on “Chernobylskaya molitva” by Svetlana Alexievich, the book available in two English translation English: Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Keith Gessen (US) and Chernobyl Prayer: A Chronicle of the Future by Anna Gunin and Arch Tait (UK)
Polish to English translation of the script by Andrzej Wojtasik
directed and adopted by: Krzysztof Popiołek
stage design by: Anna Wołoszczuk
costumes by: Piotr Popiołek
cast: Bibianna Chimiak, Karolina Sabat, Dariusz Mikuła, Piotr Starzyński
production manager: Piotr Motas
light, sound and multimedia: Piotr Motas & Krzysztof Nowak
premiere: June 3-4, 2017
production: The Kana Theatre, Szczecin (Poland)
THE REVIEWS
…motion appears when the characters cannot speak anymore, as if they were discovering that there are no words that could describe their experience. This crazy, individual dance is very physical, exhausting, as if the characters wanted to react with their exhaustion to what the words evoke (...) Their self-destructing dance is really shocking, perhaps because the flux of words – wise, right, terrible, and flooding us – at the same time make us immune to what they transmit? The Kana’s actors show the embodied desperation and despair, probably for this reason it reaches the viewer more directly…
Joanna Ostrowska, teatralny.pl
Formally, itis a collection of extremely personal monologues of the victims of Chernobyl. The monologues are brilliantly combined to make a rhythmic melody, with thoughtful framing devices such as gestures or repetitions. It was a very good idea to introduce a looped scene of an impulsive dance, which not only provide rhythm to the performance, but also acted as a needed pause, and perhaps – due to severity of the story – as catharsis, not only for the characters, but also for the viewers. . . . The young director does not repeat the worn out stage devices belonging to the “reportage theatre”,the most recentfashion; he adds a new, fresh and expressive form to it. The performance is very sad, yet at the same time very cathartic (catharsis not only in the dance scene).
Daniel Źródlewski, „Prestiż”
The production by Krzysztof Popiołek – the director and author of the adaptation – refers, in keeping with the character of the stage, to the good traditions of alternative theatre, in which important social and political problems took the form of a lively, open staging with a collective protagonist and a passionate, topical message. This is what Population Density is like – an intense performance, full of motion and passion, and at the same time formally disciplined, in which individual voices combine to form a kind of a choir: of victims, but also of witnesses of the Chernobyl disaster – one could say: heirs to this unique tragedy. This collective story is not, however, limited by its experience. On the contrary, Popiołek and his team – consisting of four Kana’s actors: Bibianna Chimiak, Karolina Sabat, Dariusz Mikuła, Piotr Starzyński – tell us about an experience that goes beyond the nuclear power plant disaster in Ukraine. What is at stake is the experience of a catastrophe as such, inscribed in the recent history of our civilisation – wars, natural disasters (which are, by the way, the effects of human activity) – and the spectre of destruction hanging over it. Just like the post-explosion cloud suspended above the stage...
Artur Daniel Liskowacki „Kurier Szczeciński”
more information about performance
Protagonists of Alexievich’s tales are lost in time. They are cracked and inaccurately assembled, they constantly compare themselves-now and themselves-in-the-past, yet they are able to see the things penetratingly. The problem is that their view is an Orpheus-like: he looked backward, they look into the skull, into themselves. Their eyes meet the ruthless gaze of Medusa, the lost time which threatens to return. They are afraid that although the past has gone and it is already unrecoverable. Their bodies cooled long time ago, they heads are still drying after the dance of the last day of the summer – in the world before the explosion. Once a head used to sweat out, nowadays it sweats in. Moreover, there is a fear that the past may become the future again. These people became carriers of trauma, sensitive to catastrophe. They are prophets of new threats. The stage choral tale explores the condition of the world and the psyche of a human being after the explosion, a human being crushed by the burden of the difficult past, functioning in a cloud of images and sentences attached on the way and brought here and now.
The performance is a tribute to the victims who died in the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The script is based on a text by Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich. The scene in which we use the musical piece "Iron Sky" is a situation in which the characters of the stories reach their limit moment. They are reminded of the past, cruel memories, and in order to get rid of it, they lose themselves in a "madness" dance, to get tired and stop remembering. This dance allows you to invoke the will to live at a time when there is a threat that life will end prematurely. This music is important to us, thanks to the emotional layers it contains, it allows us to reach extreme emotions in terms of acting. This music is like a hymn that you want to sing to the crumbling world, it gives you strength to come back to life.
The production was accomplished realized thanks to the scholarship of the
Marshal of the West Pomeranian Voivodship.
|
The performance qualified for the final of the competition for the best performance of independent theater. |
POBIERZ
ZDJĘCIA
