But there is Arcadia… That’s why Zoń ‘s performance is not at all pessimistic. It brings a smile to people’s faces.

Magdalena Huzarska-Szumiec, journalist

A wise , poignant, touching spectacle.

Józef “Żuk” Opalski, theater director, theatrologist, literary scholar, publicist

The strength of KTO’s latest premiere is the group. The team creating “Arcadia” works like a well-wound mechanism. (…)

“Arcadia” is a short, intense spectacle that breaks the viewers out of the traditional reception of a theatrical performance.

Piotr Gaszczyński, reviewer

In “ARCADIA”, the plot and the main theme of the performance is the lamentation after the hero’s death, showing his good and bad deeds.

The life of a modern Everyman (from birth to death) appears as a frantic pace, a dance ritual of passing away.

An irresistible sense of longing – for the world, for art, for ourselves – accompanies us from the first to the last scene of the performance. The comic and tragicomic images are accompanied by a melancholic distance to the passing time.

In the performance, we do not encounter bitterness or regret for what is irretrievably gone. Instead, they are replaced by children’s joy, singing and fun. Paradise is hidden in them.

With this spectacle, Zoń returns to the most beautiful images of all his works to date. He weaves an Arcadian landscape out of everything that is most beautiful and cruel in earthly life.

Ten actors take part in a seance of the KTO Theater, and the dominant element of the scenery is a bench, or rather … ten benches. They, in various configurations, build the space of the performance, they are universal and timeless material. They remind us of the life of objects, often many times longer than human existence.

Regardless of the corner of the globe in which we live, in most cases we have irretrievably abandoned the ability to sit on the street and neighborhood benches. This former domain of people of mature age, abandoned nowadays, deprives us of the ability to perceive the neighbouring world and watch it closely. And also to look beyond the horizon and stare at this symbol of hope for a much-needed rebirth. This journey of vain faith to the cradle of Mediterranean culture, inspired by Różewicz’s Et in Arcadia ego, turns into a poem about the condition of our civilization. 

In his newest premiere, Jerzy Zoń makes us strain our eyes to achieve the state of all-seeing. It exposes the present time as a prime murderer of the past. From the first to the last scene of this séance-like theatre piece without words the audience will be accompanied by the irresistible sense of longing for the world, for art, for oneself, and with the desire to obtain a gift of transferable roots. In this piece the author paints an Arcadian landscape made of everything that is most beautiful and cruel in earthly life, where echoes of mythical words reach us in every nook and cranny.

“ARCADIA” is a presented within the framework of the KTO Theatre’s project called Four Shades of Theatre and co-financed from the funds of the European Economic Area (EEA) Financial Mechanism 2014-2021, Programme ”Culture”, Outcome 2: ”Access to Culture and Art Improved”.