Marriage

“This is Poland´s best company... the company continues and shines. I often ask, myself, why? – and l must admit I do not know. Perhaps it is the atmosphere of Krakow, a town untouched by war, which has preserved the continuity of cultural life and durability of various minor, seemingly insignificant, social substructures. Perhaps the reason is that Krakow’s inhabitants are unwilling to move elsewhere and that a new production is here an event eagerly looked forward to – something that my perhaps also happen only in Moscow and Leningrad. I simply don't know.”

Konstanty Puzyna, 1974

“The entire two hundred years ‘long past of the Stary Teatr is an excellent gyroscope, a landmark in relation to the present time. We know what we should aspire to and what we must oppose. The Stary Teatr has never been a theatre of one director, one style, one literature, and therefore it has been exceptional.  We have always been an association of artists who have sometimes quarrelled, competed with one another, and sometimes gone hand in hand, and I feel obliged to preserve this model, and to give it a new meaning. I refuse to treat it in the free market categories, otherwise it is going to lose its value. Even with a lack of funds and the generally poor condition of the country, the Stary Teatr has every reason to remain a permanent company of high-class professionals: actors, directors, stage designers, technicians, etc. a company representing an aesthetic and ideological variety, but united by the same concern for the art of the theatre.”

Tadeusz Bradecki, 1990, director

I wanted to show humanity in its transition from the church of God to the church of man. Yet this idea was not contained in the work from the start, I started by casting a handful of visions onto the stage, germs, situations, and gradually, somehow, I arrived at this idea. When I reached the middle of the second act I still didn't know what I wanted. And the stumbling, drunken or somnambulistic development of my Missa Salemnis out of a series of short circuits of Form, of connections and combinations, of rhymes and inner rhythms, seemed to correspond to the development of history, which also advances in a drunken, somnambulistic state.

Witold Gombrowicz, A Kind of Testament, London, 1973

director: Jerzy Jarocki
set design: Jerzy Juk - Kowarski
music: Stanislaw Radwan
sound: Krzysztof Jedrysek
cast: Jerzy Trela, Danuta Maksymowicz, Jerzy Radziwilowicz, Pawel Kruszelnicki, Szymon Kuśmider, Dorota Segda, Krzysztof Glohisz, Andrzej Hudziak, Jan Korwin - Kochanowski, Jan Moiiczka, Aleksander Fabisiak, Marek Kalita, Boleslaw Nowak, Pawel Miśkiewicz, Krzysztof Stawowy, Boleslaw Brzozowski, Zbigniew Ruciński, Pawel Kruszelnicki, Szymon Kusmider, Alicja Bienicewicz, Malgorzata Hajewska - Krzysztofik, Beata Fudalej, Beata Paluch