Krzysztof Warlikowski works on new performance

The writer Elizabeth Costello first appeared in 1999 when John Maxwell Coetzee was invited to give two lectures at a university in the United States. Those lectures concerned a writer, Elizabeth Costello, who was invited to give two lectures at a university in the United States. In the years that followed, Coetzee went on to write several more pieces featuring Elizabeth Costello and her biography began to expand until, in 2003, she became the protagonist of an eponymous novel.

Elizabeth Costello is more than a made-up literary character. She might be said to be Coetzee’s artistic alter ego: someone who speaks in his name and bears the criticism and ire of his readers and academic polemicists. According to Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello elbows her way into his imagination and onto the page, then uses his voice to speak about philosophy, the environment and social and existential issues, and appeals to our conscience by drawing attention to the fate of animals, social injustice, and the exclusion of the elderly and the disabled persons. Appearing in texts the author had never intended for her to be in, she is like a ghost, a revenant – a dybbuk, perhaps. Or maybe she is just a beloved creature who keeps returning to haunt her maker.

Costello has also come to be a recurring character in Krzysztof Warlikowski’s theatre. She has appeared in five of his productions to date – sometimes speaking under her own name, sometimes being quoted by other characters. But while she seems to haunt Warlikowski nearly as often as she does the writer who called her to life, she has never had a whole play devoted to her. Now, in placing Elizabeth Costello firmly at the center of his latest production, Warlikowski is taking the next logical step in a process whose development he might not have foreseen when he first gave her a platform on his stage.

Krzysztof Warlikowski is one of the greastest and highly regarded modern drama and opera directors, as well as the artistic director of Nowy Theatre in Warsaw. He has worked in Poland as well as in many other countries, among others in France, Germany, Holland and Israel. His spectacles were presented at most important theatre festivals all over their world, among others in Avignon, New York and Montreal.

He is a very important person for International Festival of Plays Pleasant And Unpleasant and its programme created by Ewa Pilawska which has changed and evolved. Warlikowski’s plays showed in Łódź, together with the spectacles of Krystian Lupa and Grzegorz Jarzyna, were milestones of the festival. The audience of the shows reached for new language and theatre aesthetics. Warlikowski’s spectacles were challenges, they arose controversies and discussions.

Viewers of International Festival of Plays Pleasant And Unpleasant could see remarkable spectacles of Krzysztof Warlikowski (among others „Angels in America”, „(A)polonia”and „Odyssey. A Story for Hollywood”) and exhibitions dedicated to his work and take part in international discussion on the artist „Theatre seeking the identity”.

During the discussion in Powszechn y Theatre in Łódź Krzysztof Warlikowski told about his theatre work: „ I think of what the theatre could be in future. Theatre is a tradition that has been followed by generations. My dialogue with myself or with great texts arises due to the fact that in Poland we have to talk to each other in plain language, we have to re-establish our contacts. We were hidden in the times of communism, we were robots then. But there is a need of a closer conversation. That is why I started to create spectacles addressed to a Polish spectator who is blocked by his historical experience, whose identity is blocked”.

The idea of International Festival of Plays Pleasant And Unpleasant.

presentation of the latest spectacle by Krzysztof Warlikowski will take place on Saturday, 13 April – just two days after it premieres in Nowy Theatre in Warsaw.

It is to emphasize both the director’s craftsmanship and his work as well as his extraordinary role in the history of Polish theatre and the history of International Festival of Plays Pleasant And Unpleasant.