info

direction and adaptation Natalia Korczakowska
set design Anna Met
music Marcin Masecki, DJ Lenar
lighting design Jacqueline Sobiszewski
video Prot Jarnuszkiewicz
dramaturgic consultation Jacek Dukaj
consultant Marcin Cecko

cast: Magdalena Kuta, Katarzyna Warnke,  Eryk Lubos, Cezary Kosiński / Marcin Czarnik, Lech Łotocki, Sebastian Pawlak, Adam Woronowicz 

The scientific research station suspended near the surface of Solaris is long past its heyday. The silent ocean, more real than all the concocted by generations of scientists pretences of reality, was the core and the beginning of Solaris Science, now it is the witness of its end. The Science created to establish contact with the thinking ocean attracted outstanding personalities for decades. Solaris library contains thousands of excluding theories, arguments and disputes, which Solaris scientists devoted their lives to. The lack of a clear response from the ocean leaves the army of scientists without any leaders. There is only the grey, nameless mass of patient collectors, compilors, authors of many original experiments, but there are no large scale, daring and uniting hypotheses.

The thinking ocean is alien, closed Universe, the eternal challenge for Solaris scientist’s mind. A human being cannot fight this strangeness, he sees it as a mirror which might confirm his grandness. Work on Solaris requires accepting the constant limbo, the suspension between the understandable, obvious and the unknown and incomprehensible. All the patterns used for the evaluation of the world are discredited here. This leads people living here to self-destruction, sometimes even to a suicide. This is why there is so much controversy whether or not the scientific research station should be kept.

In this atmosphere the group of Solaris scientists conducts a series of new experiments that lead to specific observations: the Ocean reads and materialises data written in their minds and memory. It probably wishes to make contact, but it enters a sphere too private, unsuitable for communication. It makes the scientists realise their hidden weakness, so that they close themseves with their shame.
Question about the sense of Solaris Science is the question about the sense of science at all, science entangled in society and its institutions, it is the question about the limits of human cognition.

When Kris Kelvin arrives at the station there are three scientists there: planetologist Gibarian, Snow who studies cybernetics and astrophysician Sartorius. The station is engrossed in chaos. Gibarian is dead. Kelvin unable to accept the suicide of Gibarian, a great authority in Solaris science, initiates an investigation. As if the reconstruction of the death of a man who introduced him to Solaris Science could explain why he feels lost himself.

approximate running time 1 h 45 min (no intermission)