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dramaturg Sławomir Sierakowski
text adaptation Jan Klata, Sławomir Sierakowski
music adaptation Jan Klata
set design / lighting design: Justyna Łagowska
costume design and video projection Mirek Kaczmarek
choreography Maćko Prusak

cast: Ewa Kasprzyk, Maria Maj / Magdalena Kuta, Janusz Chabior, Jan Drawnel, Christian Emany, Piotr Głowacki, Eryk Lubos, Lech Łotocki, Adam Marszalik

Jan Klata is directing a new staging of The Shoemakers for TR Warszawa. He is one of the most gifted young theatre directors and Paszport Polityki (Polityka's Passport) award winner "for innovatory and brave interpretation of classical works, for his passion and persistence to diagnose the condition of Polish reality and to examine the intensity of national myths". His strong opinions on social, political and economical issues are the reason why the adaptation of Witkacy's play made by him and Sławomir Sierakowski, the executive editor of 'Krytyka Polityczna' ('The Political Critique'), contains shrewd observations and sharp opinions on contemporary Poland. The performance is a completely modern and distinct version of Witkacy's text. Jan Klata locates the action of the play in a big hypermarket where, surrounded by the symbols of today's novelty, the subject-matters of The Shoemakers are being defined anew.

Witkacy's profetic powers are commonly known - imminent totalitarism, suicide, day before yesterday's news. But we can see now that the model of practicing politics and the portrayal of social life described seventy years ago is still painfully topical. This is a devastated inner landscape destroyed not by Soviet Russians and German occupation.
Jan Klata