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We're Leaving at the Wuzhen International Theatre Festival

Presentations of Krzysztof Warlikowski's play We're Leaving at the Wuzhen International Theatre Festival in China are underway. Four shows are scheduled from 17-20 October. Yesterday, the artistic director of the New Theatre - together with other artists - symbolically inaugurated the festival by striking a gong.

Krzysztof Warlikowski is one of the most important contemporary theatre and opera creators. The production We're Leaving, based on Hanoch Levin's drama Packing Up Our Manatees, which premiered in 2018, is considered one of Krzysztof Warlikowski's greatest achievements.

The great global journey enshrined in Levin's text in Warlikowski's production finds its local face and local scale, in which all the unrest and movements on a macro scale are reflected. A rebellion is brewing, a rebellion of maturity against the appropriation of the territory of freedom and the forcing of our lives into the cogs of tranquillity offered in exchange for submission. In a comedy for eight funerals, the direction of travel most often leads to the other world. Despite the single ticket, the urge to leave does not diminish. But is there really life elsewhere? Isn't it better and wiser to concentrate on building community? Is now the time for romantic gestures or positivist work for the common good?

The Wuzhen International Theatre Festival is a recurring theatre event that showcases the best local and foreign productions. One of its founders is and its current director is Meng Jinghui, an acclaimed Chinese director who also directs the Beijing Fringe Festival. The festival lasts nine days and takes place in the scenery of the historic canal-crossed city of Wuzhen located near Shanghai. The Wuzhen Festival - due to its high artistic level and picturesque location - is compared to the Avignon Festival.

In 2021, during the coronavirus pandemic, the Wuzhen Festival presented a recording of the performance ‘We are leaving’. This time, the performance will finally be shown live. These are not the first showings of Krzysztof Warlikowski's performances in China. In 2016, ‘(A)pollonia’ was shown in two other Chinese cities - Tianjin and Harbin.

Screenings of the play ‘We are leaving’ at the Wuzhen International Theatre Festival are supported by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.