I want to sleep through this barren time when she is not beside me

The production is participating in the ShakespeareOFF competition.

The aim of ShakespeareOFF is to invite extra-institutional artists and groups whose starting-point in projects is the work of Shakespeare.to cooperate. ShakespeareOFF is a competition in which new independent productions are partly financed and are prepared especially for the festival. They will be judged by an international jury.

The production is the proposition from one of the five finalists.

“I want to sleep through this barren time when she is not beside me” is a soap-opera performance of confessions for three voices and three bodies of confidantes and is based on Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra”, “Othello” and “Romeo and Juliet”. Shakespeare’s confidantes listen to secrets, guard confidences, advise, experience others’ love, commit errors. They are always a step behind the protagonist, their presence is spectral and necessary and they remain solitary or die as the second.

The alienation and isolation of the modernist protagonist has negated the exceptional relations between the protagonist and the confidantes. The heroine remains alone and the potential of the confidential relations is not developed. How to regain the confidantes? How to make confidentiality a mutual relation? Who can confide their story in whom? Can we with the onlookers create a confidential situation? When do confessions become unwanted and obscene, and when does the expression of what is most personal and intimate open the possibility of a new communication based on the positive naïveté of mutual trust? For the confidantes, there are no matters unworthy of their attention. In things that are stupid, banal and embarrassing, the confidantes find the greatest sense.

Creators

Script and directing – Klaudia Hartung-Wójciak
Lighting – Jędrzej Jęcikowski
Vocal preparation – Bartosz Lisik
Acoustic space: Piotr Peszat
Costumes: Hanka Podraza
Sculpture: Rose by Victoria Walendzik
Promotional graphic/photo for the performance: Aga Mura

Cast

Małgorzata Biela,
Weronika Łukaszewska,
Michał Surówka,
Hanka Podraza

Language – Polish with subtitles in English / 60 minutes