10-11 October 2021

The Club. Free online access to the video registration

Location: online
Language: Polish with English subtitles
Duration: 2 hours

Registration link:
https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=gFHUnZMklE67_zBs9Fzrox6Ws4W-tgdHsUhFbLetM59URDhKNUFCMFhRN1hHT1Q1OVpGRFZTR0JMMy4u

“The Club” – a performance based on Matilda Voss Gustavsson’s book – is part of Change-Now! programme coordinated by The Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw. Initiated by graduate female acting students who did not want to accept the gender discrimination they experienced at school, the performance is an act of women empowerment on many levels. The book that shocked Swedish society by revealing violence and sexism in elite cultural circles also analyses the mechanisms of violence in any cultural institution, including theatre schools. That was a starting point for developing the performance.

Young actresses invited Weronika Szczawińska to this unique collaboration – renowned director, dramaturge, performer and lecturer at the National Academy of Dramatic Art
in Warsaw.

The process of work focused on empowerment of all collaborators was crucial for that project. Even before writing the script, the director and actresses started the open, partnered conversations about what interested them most in “The Club” – A character? An episode? A situation? A theme? Which plot? On the basis of such conversations a proposal for the director’s copy was made.

Connecting individual woman’s voices, this story of violence is at the same time a story about partnership, safe and courageous work of women speaking out about issues that are important to them. On some level, each performance tells the story of the process by which it was created. “The Club” does this in a particularly intense way.

It’s in the structure, in the relationships of the actresses with each other and to the audience, in the theatrical language, there is an encoded narrative about a different way of creating. And that is a part of the intense conversation that we are in right now at the National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw.

 

NOTE: the performance shows scenes of description of sexual violence and it is intended for viewers aged 16 and older.

Co-production:
Collegium Nobilium Theatre, The Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw,
TR Warszawa Theatre