“Katie's Tales is a complex and multi-layered meeting with Katie – a girl whose life’s experiences and fate are encapsulated in the songs. But Katie (in Polish: Kasia) is also the name of a crowd. It is traditionally used in Polish folk songs, poetry and tales, as a name of a female hero. Therefore, the encounter with Katie is a meeting with thousands of women whose experiences were excluded from and silenced by the heroic histories written and retold by men. Meeting them through and in the song means giving them back their voices, allowing us to hear them. In her work, Agnieszka Kazimierska transforms her solo performance into a fascinating dialogue with her Foremothers and – at the same time – her kinswomen.” --------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof. Dariusz Kosiński, Jagiellonian University, Kraków
Katie’s Tales is the story of a woman and her lover who, after a terrible event, left her with the promise to come back, one day. It's the story of a garden, with an orchard of cherry trees.
Katie's life unfolds during savage times. Her beloved had to leave after the last catastrophe, but he promised to return.
Together with a couple of foreign servants, Katie lives protected in her garden, under the shade of her cherry trees, silent witnesses of her life and of History. Every day she receives visitors, every moment could bring the return of the one who left, and Katy keeps herself ready.
With her stories and her silences, Katie tells us of desire, and of waiting, and of all that is never said. She who waits is on a journey herself, on the road of her life sculpted in vivid frames, under the shade of the cherry trees thick with memories and unfulfilled desires of many generations. - She is a woman standing in front of History, facing her own lights and her own shadows. Standing at the crossroads of past and future, armed with her desire, she weaves moving evocations of imbricated pasts and deeply wished-for futures.
The desire that Katie embodies invites us to question ourselves about where we belong, to ask ourselves questions about the role of our consciousness, in the deafening flow of events and in the confused whirlwind of desires.
With and by Agnieszka Kazimierska (Poland) // Directed by Mario Biagini (Italy) // With traditional Polish songs // Duration: 55’ // Performance is in English, with subtitles // Production: Fondazione Teatro della Toscana / Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards
Katie’s Tales premiered in 2018, under the direction of Mario Biagini (Associate Director of the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, Teatro Nazionale Della Toscana until 2021), and it has since been presented in various festivals, theaters, theatrical and non-theatrical spaces, including in Pontedera, Italy (Teatro Era); Florence, Italy (PARC-Teatro Della Pergola), Milán, Italy (FE Fabbrica dell'Esperienza Teatro); Selcuk, Türkiye (Medresesi Tiyatro); Perm, Russia (Diaghilev International Festival), Toronto, Canada (Studio Theatre); NYC, United States (Andrew Freedman Home Cultural Center, United Solo Festival); París, France (Theatre de La Ville), in Istanbul, Türkiye, (Theater Bahçe Galata, Theater BAU PERA SAHNE, Theater Alan Kadıköy); Sofía, Bulgaria (Toplocentrala Cultural Center); Edinburgh Fringe Festival, United Kingdom (Thistle Theater), Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States (Fusion at The Cell Theater), Buenos Aires, Argentina (Espacio Polonia and Area 364), and in Rosario, Argentina (Espacio Bravo, Teatro Sonrisa De Beckett).
REVIEWS
“...She passes over the stage like a light bird that jumps from branch to branch and sings: she touches objects, she touches her own past, assuming that there is a past, and not, instead her eternal ecstatic present…” --- Franco Acquaviva
“...One woman alone. Who masters the sense of "History" in relation to her personal history, and makes it filled with things unspoken, with songs, and with an almost "clandestine" embodied physicality, almost inviting the public (in a full room of attentive and silent spectators) to fall in love, as she does, with her lover.
The stage space is as a fifth, not a fourth, wall of the theater: it allows us all to belong to each other, so as not to separate the audience from the stage with the artist…” --- Cristina T. Chiochia
“…But another suspicion also arises: that the beloved that Katie is waiting for is not exactly the man who left one day, but the superhuman echo of an invoked presence, in anticipation of which Katie spends her days.
Thus, the packet of letters seems at a certain point to assume the value of a sacred writing that awaits completion; and the girl's words of love become words thrown into the void in anticipation of something which will fill with divinity the prosaic everyday in which she lives immersed.
Because, in the end, that which leaps to one’s eyes, beyond everything, is the joy that permeates and at times erupts from the actress's slender body. How can such a pure feeling emerge from an actor's body, from its interior, in such a spring-like way?” --- Franco Acquaviva
KATIE'S TALES (le storie di Katie) - regia Mario Biagini. By Franco Acquaviva
Theater as examples of life and community. Italian examples. By Cristina T. Chiochia
VIDEO RECORDINGS
KATIE's TALES - Full video registration: https://vimeo.com/505216179 password: please contact us at agakazimierska@gmail.com
CONTACT: Agnieszka Kazimierska, agakazimierska@gmail.com
TECHNICAL OVERVIEW AND LOGISTICS: see technical card
PHOTOS: Nikita Chuntomov and Renato Esposito