Serious themes aside, Peregrinus is also just funny and whimsical and something you’ll probably think about the next time you lug a suitcase through the airport.
The masked faces of Teatr KTO’s performers have become one of the most striking images of the 2016 festival. The acclaimed Polish theatre company takes to the streets of New York as part of FringeAl Fresco, with free, outdoor performances that explore the meaning of life when it is deprived of spirituality, love and beauty.
Zon’s puzzle is just perfect. Additionally, the costume, which makes it challenging to perform, blends into one with the artists as if it was their own skin. This requires great skills, awareness of one’s own body and the partner with whom one has to be in a relationship at every moment. The strength of Peregrinus is the perfect use of each of these elements. It seems as if the giant heads aren’t there at all, as if it’s us dancing in this corporate parade.
Peregrinus appears to be a black comedy where humour mingles with horror and the grotesque with realism. It is a tale about fears, frustrations and the feeling of loss of a 21st-century human being – delivered in an offbeat, metaphorical way. The show is marked by splendid acting as a group and the director’s original thinking.
As soon as the performance begins, crowds gather. (…) The ensemble does a tremendous job relating to their audience without language and keeping them visibly absorbed throughout the show. (…) Eryk Makohon’s choreography explores ranges of the real and illusory, exaggerating the mundane motions of daily life to create something entertaining, surprising, and sometimes unsettling.
This show is a great opportunity to stop for a moment and reflect on what we are doing with our lives. It’s not good if our world even slightly resembles the world in Peregrinus. Now that we know, we can change it. And will we?
Part circus act, part dance theatre, all delightfully strange.
I have a soft spot in my heart for PEREGRINUS by Teatr KTO because I was able to see them perform at a theatre festival in Spain. It’s exciting to see them and totally love them and then bring them here.
Hundreds of people in Aghmashenebeli Avenue in the centre of Tbilisi marvelled at the improvised show by the KTO Theatre from Poland which took place within the framework of the 2016 International Theatre Festival in Tbilisi.
A wandering theatre show inspired by poetic works of T.S. Eliot depicts a single day in the life of a contemporary everyman. In an appealing visual form, with attractive choreography and grotesque mode of presentation taken with a pinch of salt, it painfully exposes the traps of contemporary world, in which many of us fall unreflectively losing the distinctiveness of our souls. Does the collective possession of the Peregrinuses have an end? In this journey do we fall prey to the dybbuks or do we become them?
In the five seasons since its premiere the production has been presented around the world, attending over 50 festivals, the most important of which are: The Theatre Olympics (Saint Petersburg, 2019), FiraTàrrega (Tarrega, 2018), Chalon dans la rue (Chalon-sur-Saône, 2018), À nous la rue ! (Montreal, 2017), The Sziget Festival (Budapest, 2017), The Sibiu International Theatre Festival (Sibiu, 2017), The Seoul Street Arts Festival (Seoul, 2016), The Tbilisi International Theatre Festival (Tbilisi, 2016), The New York International Fringe (New York, 2016) and The Greenwich & Docklands International Festival (London, 2016).Script, music selection and stage direction
Jerzy Zoń
Mask concept
Spitfire Company
Masks design
Joanna Jaśko-Sroka
Masks production
Modelatornia Agnieszka Szarejko
Stage set and costume design
Joanna Jaśko-Sroka
Stage movement and choreography
Eryk Makohon
Performers
Karolina Bondaronek, Karolina Daniec-Franczyk, Monika Daukszo, Magdalena Dymsza, Paulina Lasyk, Grażyna Srebrny-Rosa, Marta Zoń, Sławek Bendykowski, Bartek Cieniawa, Krzysztof Cybulski, Tomasz Łukawski, Paweł Monsiel, Mieszko Syc, Krzysztof Tyszko
Premiere
May 18 & 19, 2015, Milan
Duration
50 minutes