Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment
BECAUSE OF THE CRIMES OF THE RUSSIANS THAT WE CANNOT UNDERSTAND
dir. Jakub Skrzywanek
Zbrodnia i kara

Creative Team

direction, staging concept and script supplemented with acting improvisations: Jakub Skrzywanek
collaboration on staging and lighting direction: Aleksandr Prowaliński
collaboration on staging and costumes design: Paula Grocholska
choreography: Agnieszka Kryst
music: Karol Nepelski
video: Przemek Chojnacki 
director's assistant: Dagmara Antoniszyn
law consultant: prof. Monika Płatek 

Cast

  • Artur Borkowski
  • Izabela Cześniewicz
  • Eloy Moreno Gallego
  • Paulina Jóźwin
  • Igor Kujawski
  • Agnieszka Kwietniewska
  • Dariusz Maj
  • Michał Mrozek
  • Michał Opaliński
  • Janka Woźnicka

Premiere:
16 JUNE 2023
Centrum Sztuk Performatywnych I PIEKARNIA

 

Co-production:
The Grotowski Institute, Wrocław Mime Theatre, Teatr Polski w Podziemiu Wrocław (Teatr Polski – TP dla Sztuki Foundation)

Suitable for audiences aged::
16+

The performance directly addresses the Russian crimes being committed today in Ukraine. It includes graphic scenes of violence, including sexual violence.

The script is based on materials documenting Russian war crimes collected by Ukrainian journalists, particularly members of the Slidstvo collective, and on collective searches for answers to what we actually feel when we see images of war. It also incorporates a fragment from Fyodor Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment."

"Dostoevsky describes the most famous crime in literary history as follows: He snatched the axe, grabbed it with both hands, raised it high, and, almost unaware of what he was doing, without putting any strength into the blow, as if mechanically, struck the old woman on the head."

Do we need more to understand Raskolnikov's act? What is a crime, what are its consequences, and where does it come from?

What if, this time, we focus on the victims? Instead of literature and fiction, choose the real crimes committed every day a few hundred kilometers from us, in Ukraine? Look at the images of war reaching us without the comfortable posture of sympathy that makes us feel not complicit in the murders? Especially if for over a year, we have been meeting the victims' relatives on the streets of our cities.

So, whom and how do we want to punish to satisfy our conscience, knowing that we will not punish anyone we really want to punish? Or maybe not to punish, but just try to make it all finally end. How many times can we look, without feeling embarrassed, at those who will once again go out into the street with banners: "Never again!"?

In the performance carried out in Wrocław, Jakub Skrzywanek, along with his regular collaborators, develops the idea of theatrical reconstruction through which they try to answer today's most pressing questions: how much more do we need to see? What kind of stimuli do we need to receive? What needs to happen for us, as an international community, to stop accepting the impunity of the perpetrators of these and other crimes happening in the world?

  • Poster and photoes: Natalia Kabanow
  • Promotion and marketing: Mariusz Turchan, Dorota Oczak-Stach
  • Internet: Piotr Sarama
  • Executive producer: Renata Majewska
  • Project curator: Piotr Rudzki

Competitions

  • 30. The National Competition for the Production of Polish Contemporary Drama Play