The Discomfort of Evening

When people are chilled, they must be treated like porcelain. The slightest touch can be deadly.*

The performance based on Marieke LucasRijneveld's book "The Discomfort of Evening" is a visual story about the experience of loss and its accumulation in the body and imagination; about the attempt to confront the tragedy that confines the 10-year-old protagonist and her relatives in a world immersed in mourning; about the need to find meaning in death. It is also a story about maturing and the end of childhood.

The world, where eternal winter and penetratingcold reign, is full of magical thinking, spells, andprayers. We see it through the eyes of a little girlentering adolescence. She is both an observer ofthe course of events, a narrator, and a creator offantasies - she retains the memory of the tragedy, grapples with feelings of guilt andresponsibility for her parents, and struggles withthe pangs of emptiness.

The plasticity of the world seen from a child's perspective and the childlike imagination described in the book allow for the creation ofimages from the experiences recorded in it.These images become independent micro-stories. The disturbing everyday life, from whichthe director builds the visuality of theperformance, also consists of observations of thebonds between people and animals. Throughthis prism, we can take a closer look at familyrelations - a family that lives next to each other,not with each other.

*Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

Based on "The Discomfort of Evening" by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, published in Poland by Wydawnictwo Literackie, translation: Jerzy Koch.