I see the Fab Community as a community of thoughts that circulate. Therefore, we do not stay still and keep being curious about the world. It’s an environment to create supportive bonds that will last. It is also an opportunity to share during workshops methods which I was able to gather during my documentary practice over a few years. Exchanging inspirations, giving feedback are showing that making text it’s always a way – the way that shapes and empowers writers to express one’s better over time.
Ewa Mikuła
Ewa Mikuła – dramaturg, director, author based in Poland. A graduate of Theater Studies (specialization:
performative studies) at the Jagiellonian University and Theater Directing (specialization: dramaturgy) at
AST National Academy of Theater Arts in Kraków (Poland). In her works she focuses on intimate, local narrations, perceiving them as lenses of larger processes. As a dramaturg she collaborated with directors in state theaters as well as independent initiatives creating the texts and dramaturgy for plenty of shows among others: autobiographical “Work, work” (2020), “Dialog” monthly, co-written with Piotr Froń; “The Lost Years” (2021) Gdańsk Shakespeare Festival; “Tales of the Blocks of Flats” (2022) dir. M. Streker, Wrocław Puppet Theater. Director of documentary play „Adulthood” (2023) in Divadlo Ludus (Bratislava) based on three-year documentary process with youth and adults about alternative ways of education.
In 2022, she became a participant of „Future Laboratory” – European project focused on missing European narratives and social integration – where she searches the topic of local identity and ethnic minorities during residencies in: Teatrul Tineretului in Piatra Neamț (Romania), Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg (Luxembourg) and Théâtre National de Strasbourg (France).
“Ha(e)user”
“Language is an important theme in this non-obvious drama, which opens up various fields of association. Unlike Handke’s play Kaspar, which provides a clear point of reference, language is not a tool for training or a guarantee of a place in society – for in Mikuła’s approach, it is a sensitive instrument that allows one to probe one’s own self. Speech is like a mirror that binds together the crumbled pieces of identity, and allows one to re-identify oneself. In this sense, the play can be called a kind of poetic meditation. Haeuser creates his “testament” full of lost voices and words. The characters, like cartographers, try to find and fill in their contours, although man will always remain to some extent terra incognita for himself.
Ha(e)user is a drama about the process of change and experiencing the end – not only in the ultimate sense. One is delighted by the visionary nature of this text, the poetic quality of the language, the aura of mystery, although at the same time Mikuła strongly condenses her text to the most important, powerful and memorable metaphors. As a result, the text can resonate brilliantly in interdisciplinary projects, such as dance theater or performances using video art.”
Ha(e)user | Agencja Dramatu i Teatru “ADiT”
“Hello”
“Hello” is a poetic text written for two voices. She and He – loners longing for intimacy, which at the same time they are panic-stricken, carry on a conversation full of contrasting emotions. “The real plan is combined with the plan of their inner monologues. Maintaining distance through fear of confrontation puts a question mark on the reality of their mutual existence.”
Halo | Agencja Dramatu i Teatru “ADiT”
“MY LITTLE GIRL”/ Polish title: “Moja mała”
“MY LITTLE GIRL” is a monodrama about the desire to break external and internal limitations. The text tells the story of how hard it is to hold this process within oneself.
Inspired by Tove Jansson’s short story titled. “The Fillyjonk Who Believed in Disasters” the creators want to tell a contemporary story about the personal end of the world; the end of the order imposed on us by others – full of strictures, misunderstood traditions, conventions and fulfillment of duty, but also the order imposed on us by ourselves – through our ideas of our own limits. Apocalypse, in this sense, is something frightening, but at the same time necessary to be able to function in personal freedom. The text shows how we often choose a difficult but familiar position, and how stepping out of our own comfort zone due to fear is often impossible.
“TOĆ”
“TOĆ” is a story about the Silesian language as seen through the eyes of its users. The impetus for the author to start the conversation was a personal need to confront her own experience of the Silesian language – domestic, intimate, reserved for loved ones, but also stigmatized and excluded in the public space. The author attempts to find the commonality of the Silesian language experience through conversations about and in the Silesian language with other women. Her own efforts to understand the nature of Polish-Silesian bilingualism turn into a polyphony of intimate stories about womanhood, shame, testing the buoyancy and limits of language. Suspended between the private and the public attempts to name the reality of contemporary women in Silesian and their own positioning of the Silesian language in their reality.
“Work, work” / Polish title: “Praca”
Between September 2018 and March 2019, Ewa Mikuła conducted a series of interviews with her parents. The entering professional life student (now graduate) of theater directing decided to meet with the work space of her dad and her mom, thus exploring what is common and what is different in their work and hers. The impulse for the conversations was a temporary job at a factory where her father worked, which the young director took up so that she could afford a traveling directing assistantship. The evening’s stories of effort, life choices, dreams and family, became the material that Ewa Mikuła, together with playwright Piotr Froń, arranged for a dramatic text entitled: “Work, Work.”
New Voices
Fragments of reality
Playwright: Ewa Mikula Associated Partner: SisterInArt Twinned Playwright: Stefan Wipplinger Duration: 6 days Participants: 10 artists aged 16-27
In a crooked mirror
Playwright: Ewa Mikuła Associated Partner: SisterInArt Twinned playwright: Helena Tornero Duration: 2 weeks Participants: 10 participants from all
