In her play entitled “No Matter How Hard we Tried”, Dorota Masłowska brings together different generations of Poles, juxtaposing their languages, ways of thinking, functioning and different realities they exist in. She asks about the “us” from the title, our national identity, what makes a community and how do we feel about our Polishness. The play operates in-between two contrasting attitudes: rejecting Polish identity and its blind, almost grotesque celebrating. The performance if full of ironic use of quotations from pop culture, scorns and national stereotypes, so characteristic of Masłowska’s earlier works. She finds a brilliant way of exposing the false language of advertising, colourful magazines and tabloids. She mocks the media, showing how cynical they are, confronts the consumer dreams with the reality of a family living way below the subsistence level. On the one hand, the vision of Polishness we get from “No Matter How Hard we Tried” is macabre and may be a bit exaggerated. It is nothing more than a subject of cruel jokes, it is treated like a  burden, a bad twist of fate. On the other hand, however, the play is its affirmation.

For more than a dozen of years TR Warszawa (the former Rozmaitości Theatre) has been one of the most recognized scenes in Poland. As an independent theatre it exists since 1972, however, its history goes back to the th 30s of the 20 century. Its breakthrough performance was “Tropical Madness” staged in 1997, considered a turning point for Polish contemporary theatre. TR Warszawa is also as an art centre and does not avoid presenting artistic experiments. Since 2000 it organizes exhibitions, film screenings, read-throughs of new plays and concerts. Many outstanding contemporary artists, as well as representatives of the younger generation collaborate with the theatre, preparing performances that everyone talks about. Some of them are: Grzegorz Jarzyna, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Krystian Lupa, René Pollesch and Jan Klata.