Age restrictions: 15+

The year 1816 is known as the “Year Without a Summer.” Due to the massive eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, a gigantic cloud of dust spread over the globe, causing the sunlight all over Europe to dim. Low temperatures and heavy rains destroyed the crops causing famine, which in turn caused migrations and refugee crises on several continents. At that time, the eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley, her husband, Percy, and several friends, including Lord Byron, were spending their holidays on Lake Geneva. Cooped up in a luxurious, desolate villa, they amused themselves with a competition for the best ghost story. That’s how Polidori’s “The Vampyre,” Byron’s “The Burial: A Fragment,” and Shelley’s “Frankenstein” – regarded as the first science-fiction fantasy novel – were created. To this day the protagonist of “Frankenstein,” the unnamed Creature, keeps haunting our culture in its countless variations and forms. It nags away at us and keeps stirring incomprehension, fear, and consternation.

Interpreted by Jędrzej Piaskowski and Hubert Sulima, “Frankenstein” becomes a portal to a different reality, the starting point for examining how people act when faced with extraordinary, “out of this world” phenomena, and what usually inaccessible desires, questions, and energies emerge as a result. We tend to turn to these issues in moments of uncertainty and crises – such as the death of loved ones – that turn our attention to matters outside of everyday logic, transcending objectivity and rationality.

The starting point for the creators of the performance is the moment of mother’s death – an experience fundamental not only for the author of the novel and its protagonists but also for each of us. An experience that changes all.

Cast

Theatre Program (in Polish)

Making of

Gallery