Wroclaw Puppet Theatre performs in the US
The Wroclaw Puppet Theatre from Poland is to perform "The Last Escape," based on the novels of Bruno Schultz, and directed by Aleksander Maksymiak, from September 30 to October 3, as part of La MaMa's Puppet Series Festival.
With the La MaMa Puppet Series Festival, the formative East Village theater once again takes its place as a leading US entry point for artists from around the world, and where the international influence on New York artists is most on display. This festival features US premieres of multicultural works from India, Poland, Bali, Japan and the Czech Republic in addition to two that, while crafted in New York, are brimming with international art forms. One production is a significant revival. The series culminates October 7 to 10 with "Motel," the puppet play of "America Hurrah," Jean-Claude van Itallie's trilogy, which was originally presented by La MaMa in 1965 and is now widely regarded as the watershed Off-Broadway play of the Sixties. The festival is supported by The Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater and utilizes all three of La MaMa's performance theaters.
This stage production aims to encapsulate the essence of Schultz' work. Men, in Schultz's many-themed, multi-layered prose works, seem to embody mental faculty. The play's main character is based on Józef - a pensioner and protagonist of "The Last Escape." He tries to break through his own loneliness and boredom to escape his room. He finds that there is a place where time belongs to no one, and he recalls pictures and events from the past. By stimulating his imagination, he finds his parents and his childhood, that is, a new space in which to exist. Emphasis is placed on the "one and only human tragedy - the tragedy of time." Józef never dies a definite death; rather, he retreats into another space, into other regions of existence. Polish author Krzysztof Stala wrote, "this imaginary being is stratified on various levels, it is crushed into numerous realities. Between those divisions happens permanent communication, the changes of meanings, accumulation of pressures."