based on S. Ansky –– Directed by: Maja Kleczewska –– Production: The Ester Rachel Kamińska and Ida Kamińska Jewish Theater (Poland)
Translated by: Michał Friedman –– Stage version: Maja Kleczewska, Łukasz Chotkowski –– Stage design, lights, video: Wojciech Puś –– Costumes: Konrad Parol –– Dramaturgy: Łukasz Chotkowski –– Music: Stefan Węgłowski –– With: Marcin Błaszak, Piotr Chomik, Waldemar Gawlik, Genady Iskhakov, Magdalena Koleśnik, Joanna Przybyłowska, Henryk Rajfer, Rafał Rutowicz, Wanda Siemaszko, Piotr Sierecki, Piotr Strażowski, Barbara Szeliga, Dawid Szurmiej, Gołda Tencer, Ewa Tucholska, Jerzy Walczak, Marek Węglarski
Performance in Polish, Hebrew and Yiddish, with German, Romanian and English translations.
In 1939, Warsaw was the biggest cluster of Jews in Europe and the second, right after New York, Jewish cluster in the world. We must always remember it and keep talking about it. We must talk about everyday life, culture, individual people who lived and died there. The show The Dybbuk has been based on the classical Jewish drama by S. Ansky, Yiddish Romeo and Juliet, a folk legend telling the story of the soul of the deceased Yeshiva student who enters the body of his beloved. Maja Kleczewska and Łukasz Chotkowski put the story in a broader context, making it a story of a broken alliance between the nations and about the returning memory. Ansky’s drama is extended with additional stories of ghetto citizens as well as victims and survivors of Holocaust. During the time of revisiting threat of totalitarian ideologies and wars, we must remind about the murdered people, their Life, in order to prevent the history coming full circle.
“Powerful, trance-like, piercing and ambiguous is the beginning of Dybbuk.”