Transfer!
Producer Wrocławski Teatr Współczesny (PL)
Coproducers Hebbel-am-Ufer Berlin, Hauptstadt Kultur Fonds, Deutches Nationaltheater and Staatskapelle in Weimar (D)
Polish opening 18. 11. 2006 Wrocławski Teatr Współczesny (PL)
German opening 18. 1. 2007 Hebbel-am-Ufer Berlin (D)
Running time 2 hours. No interval.
Director Jan Klata
Dramaturges Dunja Funke, Sebastian Majewski
Yalta scenes Jan Klata
Set designer Mirek Kaczmarek
Casting/research Ulrike Dittrich, Zbigniew Aleksy
Projection Robert Baliński
Lighting designer Jan Sławkowski
Cast
Sta Przemysław Bluszcz k. g.
Chu Wiesław Cichy k. g.
Roo Zdzisław Kuźniar
and
Karolina Kozak, Ilse Bode, Angela Hubrich, Hanne-Lore Pretzsch, Zbigniew Górski*, Jan Kruczkowski, Zygmunt Sobolewski, Andrzej Wilk**, Matthias Goeritz, Dietrich Garbrecht
** Zbigniew Górski (actor) replaces Jan Charewicz who passed away on 5th August 2009.
** Andrzej Wilk (actor) replaces Andrzej Ursyn-Szantyr who passed away on 13th December 2010.
The script of the play, ironically entitled Transfer!, was created on the initiative and commission of Büro Kopernikus, Polish-German Cultural Projects. Jan Klata tackled an extremely painful subject, always present in the social and political conscience of both Poles and Germans: the expulsion. It is one of the most difficult chapters of contemporary history, and the play itself forms not only an attempt at a "non-political” perspective on the problem of resettlement, but also a
specific revision of ideas deep-rooted on both sides of the border.
Jan Klata decided to tell about the expulsion from today’s perspective, sixty years after the war, in Wrocław: The script was created on the basis of accounts and memories of living witnesses-participants of those tragic occurrences, who were invited by the director to take part in the project. These people are the actors-protagonists of the spectacle. The dramaturgical operation of the clash between the world of theatre and authentic narrative clearly reveals the main idea of the
performance: it bares the tragedies of ordinary people, swept up in and wounded by the cogs of the Great Mechanism of History.