Premiered within the framework of the Culture Without Barriers Festival and the series “Let’s talk about (dis)ability”.
In this performance a combined team of Teatr 21’s and TR Warszawa’s artists explore the subject of modern family and relationships within a family unit. Actors and actresses from both theatres will build on their personal experiences and their previous movie and stage roles to create a family comedy of errors, where the dark side of family relationships meets desires and fantasies about a harmonious family straight from Polish TV series. Can a person with a disability be a fully recognized
member of a family – not only a son or a daughter but also an aunt, an uncle, a mother, or a father? Can an actor/actress with a disability be a full-fledged memberof a theatrical family?
From the creators:
A perfect family model does not exist in real life but what is common for all of them is this dream of being a member of a harmonious family unit. It’s this need for safety, love, acceptance, and understanding that pushes us to take the risk and try to start a family because we believe that we are able to unlock its nurturing and supporting potential. On the stage we want to set up an inclusive lab to take a closer look at the social model of a family, which is inaccessible for half of the actors involved in the project (representatives of Teatr 21). Under Polish law, persons with intellectual disabilities can’t enter into a marriage. What are the consequences of this restriction? What
concerns does it result from and what truth does it reveal about the majority of our society? What does it say about the state and its rules, that govern the everyday life of its citizens? Can we create in a theatre situations that are otherwise socially unacceptable? These are the questions that we want to ask ourselves and the audience.
Family as a concept can be incoherent because people who form the family oftentimes have different worldviews. Each relationship with another person has a conflict potential. Family ties – a network of pulsating relationships, usually come with a not entirely successful execution of standardized models and ideas. This effective differentiation from the level of declarations and collective expectations is one of the most significant qualities of Polish family relationships.
Agata Stanisz, Family made in Poland. Anthropology of consanguinity and family life, Poznań, 2014
