Delivering your second play is always a challenge. Remarkable debuts are usually followed by unrealistically high expectations, and wide open to excessive criticism. It was no different for Anna Karasińska: after the staggering success of her Ewelina’s Crying, expectations for her next show kept on growing. Karasińska managed to meet the challenge with real gusto – she took this problem and turned it into the subject of her next work, thereby creating a brilliant, surprising and moving show about theatre, its audiences and above all about the actors of Teatr Polski in Poznań, for whom The Other Show is a gesture of emancipation.

What is the experience shared by the theatrical community, made up of actors and audiences – how to achieve a clean flow of energy between stage and public? How to arouse the viewers’ imaginations? The team behind The Other Show pose questions about meta-theatricality, without attempting to give any clear cut answers, obviously.

The Other Show by Anna Karasińska is not only her second play, but is also a tale about that “other performance” which is always set among the audience. Karasińska, together with her team of actors, begins by presenting a debrief on “how to behave in theatre.” (…) These short and humorous scenes become at a certain point a dangerous game with those watching the show. It is clear that the actors, in presenting certain gestures, begin to ape those watching them. (…) Anna Karasińska once again shows that she is capable of effectively using theatricality and observing the mechanisms which govern the stage. Her plays are humble and unpretentious, and at the same time one can see in them the deep consideration given to the very meaning of creating art. The director, along with Magdalena Ptasznik (responsible for stage directions), has managed to extract the subtlest of nuances from each performance. Everyone present on stage becomes an independent character, and yet it is easy to see how they are capable of working as a whole and together, without arrogance or selfishness, able to deliver an outstanding piece of theatre.
Stanisław Godlewski, Gazeta Wyborcza

I have never seen artists from Poznan’s Teatr Polski in such fine form. Karasińska constructs a minimalistic show based on precise, delicate gestures… on focused, detailed observations and the ability to utilise the tiniest element. And also on ridicule of theatrical snobbery. The second half of The Other Show is a game of challenges: “I want to feel something”, “I want to see something about…” The actors, one by one, walk out into the audience. The situation becomes more complex, layered, while the expectations become higher and harder to meet.
Witold Mrozek, Gazeta Wyborcza

Choreography
Magdalena Ptasznik

Costumes
Anna Nykowska

Lighting
Szymon Kluz

Assistant director and stage manager
Agnieszka Misiewicz