Empire

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.

The artists about the performance

The forest is a witness, it listens, it helps. It gives hope, safety and shelter. It is full of hints sounds. And people – those hidden behind fallen trees and soaked after crossing swamps and those bringing them water and dry clothes.
It is also full of birds and wild animals which turn out at night to be less frightening than the border guards and armed soldiers.
“Imperium” is a performative installation inspired by the image of the walking wood from “Macbeth” and the experiences of migrants and those helping them on the Polish-Belarussian border. Drawing on Shakespeare’s texts and on images of the humanitarian crisis on the border, we wonder about the strategies of survival during the escape, and about how nature manages to help humankind in a crisis, how to help refugees and how gestures of solidarity are criminalised by the authorities and, finally, how much evil lives in the authorities, who go uinpunished.

Creators

Alicja Borkowska
Adrien Cognac
Olia Kalakoltsava
Artur Pałyga
Oma A. Ukwuoma
Alexey Vorsoba
Łukasz Wójcik
Ray Dickaty

Photography – Agata Kubis
Language – Polish with subtitles in English