Somewhere, not too far away there are towns and there are houses in which people live and love, dance and work, bring up their children, quarrel and cry, like everywhere else. And all of the sudden the houses get demolished by the bombs, the towns are burning(…). Mass graves, mud, hunger, homelessness and emptiness’.
The Ark reminds us that we live in the epoch of exiles, travellers, vagabonds, nomads who wondering through the continents elevate their souls with the memories of their spiritual or ethical, heavenly or geographical, real or imaginary home. It is symbolised by a large winged ship – multi-levelled mobile stage – a new embodiment of the Noah’s Arch. And if we close our eyes it can be transformed into the boat of Aeneas, Mayflower or a Cuban raft patched together from rubber pontoons drifting to the Florida shore. – says the commentary offered by the company.
‘Teatr Ósmego Dnia invites us to the Ark by which travel the expelled from their country, for they want to learn how to dream again, how to maintain their belief in the future. The land which they will reach can turn out to be us’ , writes Andrzej Niziołek.
Theatre happens when we succeed in justifying a given truth to such an extent that it becomes felt almost physically. Theatre is participation. It is not meant to make us feel like exiles – it is impossible. However some kind of pain was shared by the actors and the audience on that evening. This pain – in theatre – can be a purifying force. Like rain falling on the dry ground’, writes Ewa Otrębowska-Piasek.