Elizabeth Costello. - 7 Lectures and 5 Moral Tales

Directed by: Krzysztof Warlikowski
Composer: Pawel Mykietyn
Designer Set design and costumes: Małgorzata Szczęśniak
Photographer: Magda Hueckel

Durations: 240 minutes, including 1 intermission

Cast:
Mariusz Bonaszewski,
Andrzej Chyra,
Piotr Polak
Małgorzata Hajewska-Krzysztofik,
Maja Komorowska,
Hiroaki Murakami,
Monika Niemczyk,
Maja Ostaszewska,
Ewelina Pankowska,
Jacek Poniedziałek,
Magdalena Popławska

Any additional materials:

Lighting design: Felice Ross
Dramaturgy: Piotr Gruszczyński
Artistic collaboration: Claude Bardouil
Video and animations: Kamil Polak
Make up: Monika Kaleta

Assistant director: Jeremi Pedowicz
Stage manager: Łukasz Jóźków
Technical coordinator: Paweł Kamionka
Sound: Mirosław Burkot
Light: Dariusz Adamski
Video: Tomasz Jóźwin
Cameraman: Bartłomiej Zawiła
Subtitles: Zofia Szymanowska 

Premiere: April 11, 2024
Production: Nowy Teatr, Warsaw
Co-production: Schauspiel Stuttgart, Festival d’Avignon, Théâtre de Liège, La Colline – théâtre national, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Athens Epidaurus Festival, Malta Festival Poznań 2024
Partners: Kinoteka, IAM, Culture.pl, Institut Français de Pologne, Arctic Paper

The performance uses excerpts from the following literary works:
J.M. Coetzee "Elizabeth Costello" translated into Polish by Zbigniew Batko
J.M. Coetzee "Slow Man" translated into Polish by Magdalena Konikowska
J.M. Coetzee "As a Woman Grows Older", "Vanity", "The Glass Abattoir" translated into Polish by Jacek Poniedziałek

Copyright for "Elizabeth Costello" © 2003 by J.M. Coetzee
Copyright for "Slow Man" © 2005 by J.M. Coetzee
Copyright for "Moral Tales" © 2017 by J.M. Coetzee
Copyright for "Interview" © 2018 by J.M. Coetzee; Soledad Costantini
Arranged by the Peter Lampack Agency, Inc.  

Philippe Parreno "Anywhere Out of the World" (2000)

Sophie Calle "La dernière image", Istanbul 2010 translated into Polish by Agata Kozak
Sophie Calle "Des histoires vraies" © Actes Sud, Arles 2018 translated into Polish by Agnieszka Grudzińska
Sophie Calle "North Pole", 2009
Franz Kafka "Report to the Academy" translated into Polish by Juliusz Kydryński
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "Faust" translated into Polish by Jacek St. Buras
Frances Farmer "God is Dying", 1931 

The following photographs were used in the performance:
Gustaf Gründgens, photo by ÖNB / Vienna
Veit Harlan, 1942, photo by ullstein bild via Getty Images
Joseph Goebbels presents professorial appointments to Veit Harlan and Wolfgang Liebneiner, 1943, photo by ullstein bild via Getty Images
Ferdinand Marian in the role of Prince Konstantin in the film "Die Stimme des Herzens", 1937, photo by ullstein bild via Getty Images
Heinz Rühmann, postcard with an image from the film "Bachelor's Paradise", 1939

The visual identity of the performace uses photographs from the series:
Sophie Calle "North Pole", 2009

Trigger warnings: strobe light, loud sound, animal imitation objects

AWARDS:

• Best Actor of The 17th International Theatre Festival Divine Comedy, Krakow 2024 for Maja Komorowska 
• Best Scenography of The 17th International Theatre Festival Divine Comedy, Krakow 2024 for Małgorzata Szczęśniak

ABOUT PERFONMANCE:

Elizabeth Costello is more than a made-up literary character. She might be said to be Coetzee's artistic alter ego: someone who speaks in his name and bears the criticism and ire of his readers and academic polemicists. Costello has also come to be a recurring character in Krzysztof Warlikowski's theatre. She has appeared in five of his productions to date – sometimes speaking under her own name, sometimes being quoted by other characters. Now, in placing Elizabeth Costello firmly at the center of his production, Warlikowski is taking the next logical step in a process whose development he might not have foreseen when he first gave her a platform on his stage.

PRESS:

“The outstanding theatre maker has constructed an extraordinary and erudite labyrinth that requires a knowledge of history, literature and art . His latest piece is  a stunning theatrical experience that some will approach as they would a painful ontological dilemma while others might struggle to decipher its complex universe of connotations, intertextuality and synecdoche.

Elizabeth is an ever-changing intellectual enigma. Perhaps that is why Warlikowski has enlisted six actors (five female and one male) to

performatively depict her character development. These successive reincarnations are vehicles for exploring the situation and spiritual condition of the individual in Western civilization and the dual nature of personality, split as it is between the spiritual and the real, between agency in the public sphere and turmoil in personal life.

In our complex post-digital age Krzysztof Warlikowski offers theatre that speaks to our spiritual needs and dilemmas and brilliantly serves its purpose at the present juncture in human civilization.

He has given us a multi-faceted, well thought-out, exquisitely conceived and executed production with a demanding rhythm, one that requires tenacity and receptiveness to appreciate.”

Heleni Koutsilaiou

“Warlikowski invites us back into a familiar theatrical world, complete with spectacular costumes and Małgorzata Szczęśniak's elegant, minimalist set  where a tiled bathroom serves as the private space in which characters can be free of social pressure, and where the multi-purpose Plexiglas hothouse-cum-cage is a domestic interior, an exhibition case containing two stuffed albatrosses, a stage on a cruise liner, as well as a portal separating the world of the living and the dead. We are not surprised to hear Paweł Mykietyn's disturbing score and see Kamil Polak's dazzling projections of a melting glacier as well as Felice Ross's lighting that makes the on-stage temperature range from tropical heat through laboratory coolness all the way to the freezing cold of the Antarctic.

This time, however, Warlikowski has used these familiar elements contributed by his regular collaborators to create what is perhaps his most unexpected work to date: a piece without a dominant theme, whose meanings keep eluding us even though we see its protagonist in a variety of situations, at different ages in her life, and interpreted in many different ways. While what is implicit here is no less important than the scenes themselves – all the crumbs scattered throughout the performance that allow us to put together the puzzle and also find subtle connections with Warlikowski's previous work – the finale leaves us with a still incomplete, and thus, perhaps, all the more intriguing portrait of Elizabeth Costello.”

Magda Piekarska

I believe that Elizabeth Costello is Krzysztof Warlikowski's most personal production. I can see him in each of the Elizabeth Costellos; I hear him saying “I am Elizabeth Costello,” even though those words are never actually spoken. This is perhaps the first time Warlikowski has so openly broached the subject of old age: he touches upon the fleeting nature of existence and describes how it affects him. In the finale he might be looking at the world through the eyes of Elizabeth Costello, played this time by Maja Komorowska: terrified, and yet hopeful, his gaze focused on something – because there is something out there, after all.

Jasek Wakar