Slaves of the net

Roman Pawłowski, GAZETA WYBORCZA

Electronic City - a premiere within the framework of Teren Warszawa project. Teatr Rozmaitości broadens its territory: after the performance at the main Warsaw railway station it moved to occupy a whole floor of an office block in the city centre.

Have you ever happened to forget your PIN-code at the ATM? Behind you there is a growing queue of irritated customers, in your head - confusion, is it 6345 or 6346... or perhaps 6348? You enter the digits with trembling hands but the machine is relentless. This is the experience of the main character in Electronic City, staged by Teatr Rozmaitości within the framework of Teren Warszawa project in an office block in Mysia Street, the former seat of the Main Censor's Office. The story is about Tom, the manager of international corporation (Michał Żurawski) who one day forgets who he is, which country he is in, what he is here for and where he is going next. He tries to remember his PIN-code, as if it was the key to his identity but his overloaded memory refuses to co-operate.

Falk Richter, who is a 34-year-old playwright from Hamburg connected with the Berlin Schaubühne, shows us a very interesting portrait of people lost in the global electronic net. Their identity consists in a series of digits opening door locks, giving access to bank accounts and airway reservations. One digit slips their memory and all the intricate construction falls into ruin; this is known to anyone who has experienced despair standing in front an ATM. Suddenly, a seemingly orderly life turns into chaos.

But memory problems are not the main issue here. Richter poses a question about the emotions of a human living in the unreal world of departure lounges, identical luxury apartment blocks and offices. What happens to feelings when the only contact with the world is through the window of an air-conditioned office block and a computer screen? Richter shows the tremendous loneliness of the information era, his characters suffer from an acute lack of contact with another person. This cannot be substituted with a message left on the answerphone. Young managers are the heroes of Richter's play. They conduct the narration themselves, including stage directions, as in Richter's play characters are not separated from the process of dramatic creation.

Joy, a check-out girl in a bar at the airport, is one of the characters in the play - an excellent performance from Magdalena Popławska. Popławska is so natural in her behaviour and gestures that intially she looks like someone from the audience who happens to be among the actors by chance. Later, with [ ] great [ ] humour she shows the desperation of the check-out girl surrounded by a mob of angry businessmen. Afterwards, she can cut us to the quick with her messages left on her partner's answerphone in which she begs him to meet her.

This funny and thought-provoking performance has just one weak point - namely, it is staged in a country where the unemployment rate is a two-digit number. Somehow, it is difficult to be truly moved by the problems of people who go crazy because of the excess of work, and change job positions like underwear, when one realises how many young people in Warsaw and elsewhere would do anything to be on the seventh floor of the super-modern office block in Mysia street. They wouldn't like to be there as spectators, though.