Tanto Theater was founded in 1989. Their founders – Susanna Tabaka-Phillhofer and Jan Tabaka described it as a theatre of music and movement with its roots in the Polish experimental theatre. Jan Tabaka – earlier connected with Teatr Gardzienice – co-operated with Teatr Laboratorium of Jerzy Grotowski, and with Eugenio Barba and Andre Gregory.
Tanto Theater has so far staged several performances. Their common feature was the strongly exposed musical structure that in fact organised the whole show. The audience discovers it not only in singing and music but first of all in the rhythm of word, gesture and composition. Although the word is not of a primary importance in their theatre, its creators clearly point to their literary inspirations; in their work they used texts by Cervantes, Merimee, Mrożek.
The play “The President and Me” performed at the Lublin Theatre Confrontations in 199 was awarded at the 10th International Festival of the Experimenting Theatre in Cairo, and Jan Tabaka received the Prize for the Best Actor.
… the Actors treat their bodies in the way a sculptor treats clay. Susanna Tabaka-Pillhofer and Jan Tabaka cans top for a moment in their momentary pose as a monument of entangled bodies, and then continue to follow the precisely set tracks of acting.
(I. Ławecka “Życie Warszawy”)