Polish performer Ewa Żurakowska based her upcoming project on Nobel Laureaute Olga Tokarczuk´s novel House of Day, House of Night. Production Home Beyond the Borders? will take the audience into the world of dreams, surreal and visionary reality in premiere on 31st July at beautiful Gorzanow Castle.
Multidisciplinary project Home Beyond the Borders? is based on the themes from the novel House of Day, House of Night by Nobel Laureate Olga Tokarczuk. The monodrama takes us into the realm of sounds, poetic images and oneiric texts, video screenings and movement. Into the world of dreams, surreal and visionary reality inspired by the stories of the Polish author. The performance also draws on local legends and tales from the Kłodzko and Nowa Ruda regions present in the novel.
Ewa Żurakowska, the author of a concept, script and also the only performer in the production, read the book for the first time twenty years ago. But the thought of using it as an inspiration for the show came much later. “Two years ago, I decided that I would like to make a monodrama referring to my personal experiences of living in the Polish-Czech borderland and familiarizing the local environment, but also to the experience of living in both countries. I began to be intrigued by the subject of identity, being “at home” and being “in a foreign country“ or being “in a foreign land”.”
Żurakowska lived in Prague and at the same time worked at the Polish Gorzanów Castle in the Kłodzko Land. “The cross-border context of what I wanted to tell in the performance met the regional aspect of the book, that was written by Olga Tokarczuk in a small Polish village next to the border with Czech Republic,” the performer describes.
Home Beyond the Borders? explores the theme of home as a space of identity, home as a body and body as a home. It raises questions about transgressing boundaries between people and worlds, dream and reality, community and intimacy. It also constitutes the process of putting down roots in the landscape of the borderland in the Polish-Czech mountains, where the Nobel Prize winner’s book was written and where the performance is presented.
A strong emphasis is placed on the issues of identity, putting down roots, uprooting and returning, especially since the action (both of the book and the performance) takes place in the ‘regained territories’, an area with Polish, Czech and German roots.
Żurakowska chose fragments of the book which were particularly close to her and created the script together with a Polish director Maciej Gorczyński, which whom she has worked before on a production Requiem and also on an online production Bieguni.
There is also a crucial part of the performance, which is music live performed by Żurakowska together with musicians Paweł Kopeć and Katarzyna Kolczyńska – Niemierowska. Choreography was created by French dancer and performer Cécile Da Costa and scenography and video projections by Iwona Bandzarewicz.
After the Polish premiere in Gorzanow Castle the performance will travel to Czech Republic where it will have its site-specific premiere in Broumov’s Underground club Eden. On 22nd of August it will come back to Poland, and it will be presented in Kudowa at Teatr Zdrojowy.