- Performances – Indoor – Chorus of Orphans
Pure, small and fragile tale made of tartness…
Paweł Głowacki, Dwójka Polskiego Radia (Polish Radio 2)
Joanna Marcinkowska, Dziennik Teatralny Kraków
Chorus of Orphans
Jerzy Zoń
Acting is perfect. There is an incredibly harmonious team of talented individuals on the stage. (…) The actors have managed to work out an extraordinary level of mutual listening and through movement, facial expressions and sounds they create a real choir which composes itself with the symphony without striking a false note. Lighting, props and stage design are also flawless. There is nothing redundant, nothing can be taken out without destroying the intricate composition of the performance.
Whatever story you may build on the basis of the sequence of pantomime images presented in Jerzy Zon’s Chorus of Orphans, you will always find the same shadow at the bottom. The lack of consolation. The lack of illusion that consolation can help. It can’t. It doesn’t help. (…)
There is nothing we can do any more, Zon says, as it seems, in his pure, small and fragile tale made of tartness.
I am one of those idiot spectators who desire meaning, consistency, clarity of argument, those lucky ones brought up by Swinarski, Jarocki, Wajda, Grzegorzewski. I am also vigilant and praises for pseudo-modernity do not impress me at all. And they – Zoń and his group – find such people as me all over the world. Probably they will soon set off on another journey with a new performance. I left Chorus of Orphans with the faith and conviction that theatre can be done wisely and beautifully even without words.
The essence of the show is the loneliness of a contemporary human being trapped in a net of individual and social limitations. (…) A huge impression is made by a universal, innovative stage set and the energetic physicality of the actors hypnotising the audience. (…) Without a shadow of doubt Chorus of Orphans is one of the best foreign productions of this year’s 35th edition of the Fadjr International Theatre Festival in Tehran.
The eschatological dimension of the performance allows us to look at orphanhood as spiritual exile. This is without doubt the power of Chorus of Orphans, just as the composition of the show remains relevant and worthwhile. The actors perform coherently. They are a uniform group, creating an interesting choreographic routine.
Chorus of Orphans by the KTO Theatre conveys the voice of loneliness (…). So what does it sound like? It reverberates in our ears with the clinking of metal cups. Every now and then it bursts out more powerfully in the pitter-patter of the orphans’ feet and in rhythmic melodies composed of the sounds of hands and whole bodies crashing together. Sometimes the space is pierced by a shrill scream. All these sounds go to make up a multi-voice choir of the orphans.
In terms of its storyline, this performance without words, with a constant music background based on the 3rd Symphony by Mikołaj Górecki, is a picture of a bygone orphanage. In a broader context, however, it is a depiction of people put in extreme conditions with which they must find out just who they are, being condemned to collectivity and loneliness at the same time.
An impressively precise movement score with rhythm and time frame defined by Henryk Mikołaj Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs).
Script and direction
Jerzy Zoń
Music
Henryk Mikołaj Górecki III Symfonia
Stage set and costume design
Joanna Jaśko-Sroka
Movement
Eryk Makohon
Production of stage set and structures
Pracownia Ślusarska Robert Calikowski
Rhythmic training of the cast
Grzegorz Bauer
Director’s Assistant
Monika Kozłowska
Performers
Karolina Bondaronek, Paulina Lasyk, Karolina Kamińska/Katarzyna Pamuła, Grażyna Srebrny-Rosa, Justyna Wójcik, Marta Zoń, Sławek Bendykowski, Bartek Cieniawa, Paweł Monsiel/Aleksander Kopański, Michał Orzyłowski
Premiere
September 20 and 21, 2014
Duration
52 minutes, 6 seconds
On the 23rd of November, 2015 the Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute has announced the winners of the first edition of the Theatre Photography Competition, which accompanied the 250th-anniversary celebrations of the Public Theatre in Poland. Out of 170 photographers, in the “Picture Set Documenting a Performance” category the jury awarded the first prize to pictures of the Chorus of Orphans by Adam Golec.
