September 26, 2024 – October 6, 2024
La MaMa
The Downstairs Theather
66 East 4th Street, basement level
New York, NY 10003

Tickets
Adults: $30
Students/Seniors: $25
The first 10 tickets are $10 (limit 2 per person)
Ticket prices are inclusive of all fees.

The production will travel from New York to Radom for the Gombrowicz Festival (October 19^th) and to Teatr Dramatyczny in Warsaw (October 21^st).

Witold Gombrowicz (1904–1969) was a Polish writer and playwright known for his innovative and often provocative works that explore the absurdity of human existence, most notably, the novel Ferdydurke. In his play The Marriage, we follow Henry, a young soldier who returns home from war to find his world in disarray. In a dream-like sequence, the boundaries between reality and illusion begin to blur.

“Gombrowicz’s writing combines philosophical depth with the wittiest sense of humor,” said director Zishan Ugurlu, a member of La MaMa’s Great Jones Repertory Company. “He is provocative, instructive, and grotesque. In The Marriage, Gombrowicz explores how language brings things into being, how utterance makes ideas material, and he asks who has the power to dictate reality and truth. In our production of the 1946 play, which has never before had a professional production in New York, ‘indecent acts’ and ‘deformations’ are explored in our hero’s dreamland. They reveal themselves through upside-down flags, Hoots fingers and Hooters Girls, a bloody insurrection and declarations when our hero, Henry, returns home from war but finds that nothing is as he remembered. Even as he grapples with questions of identity and the authentic self, Gombrowicz imbues Henry’s dream with fun and games, with poetry, terror, and struggle. The author is a tightrope walker–a provocateur–whose words are as valid today as they were almost 80 years ago.”

Written by WITOLD GOMBROWICZ
Translated From the Polish by Louis Iribarne

La MaMa Presents in partnership with
The Polish Cultural Institute in NY
Jan Kochanowski Powszechny Theater of Radom
Adam Mickiewicz Institute (IAM)

DIRECTOR
Zishan Ugurlu

FEATURING
Bill Bowers
Celeste Ciulla
Gardiner Comfort
Annie Hägg
Conor Andrew Hall
Anna Podolak
Alex Scoloveno
Jackson Scott
Oluwaseun “Kayodè” Soyemi

DESIGNERS
Michał Dracz (set and lighting design)
Krystian Szymczak (costume design)
Sam Sellers (sound design)

DRAMATURGS
Alexandra Chasin
Shari Perkins

PRODUCTION/STAGE MANAGER
Dakota Silvey
Producer for “The Marriage”: Tomek Smolarski and Małgorzata Potocka

ASSISTANTS
Lillie Schenkel: Assistant to Production / Stage Manager
Samantha Tonn: Assistant to Production / Stage Manager
Lily Taggart: Assistant to Set / Lighting / Costume Designers

Presented in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute NY, Jan Kochanowski Powszechny Theater of Radom, and Adam Mickiewicz Institute (IAM).

Witold Gombrowicz (1904 –1969) – writer and playwright. He was one of the greatest Polish writers of the 20th century and one of the Polish writers whose work is most recognised throughout the world, he is, next to Stanisław Lem, the most frequently translated, read in 34 languages.

His works are characterised by deep psychological analysis, a certain sense of paradox and absurd, anti-nationalist flavour. In 1937 he published his first novel, Ferdydurke, which presented many of his usual themes: problems of immaturity and youth, creation of identity in interactions with others, and an ironic, critical examination of class roles in Polish society and culture. He gained fame only during the last years of his life, but is now considered one of the foremost figures of Polish literature. His diaries were published in 1969 and are, according to the Paris Review, “widely considered his masterpiece”. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966.

In his work, Gombrowicz struggled with Polish traditions and the country’s difficult history. This battle was the starting point for his stories, which were deeply rooted in this tradition and history. Gombrowicz is remembered by scholars and admirers as a writer and a man unwilling to sacrifice his imagination or his originality for any price, person, god, society, or doctrine.

Gombrowicz is exceptional in the history of literature, due for one thing to his philosophy, the way he built his texts, and the power of his language. He was tireless in arguing against polish tradition, history, yet the dispute was a starting point for tests both rooted in the very same tradition and history and universal.

„He belonged among those Central European writers who were able to take advantage of the civilisational bacwardness of his own country  to have a critical perspective on the contemporary ideas  and art. Of his time. He created works looking very far forward – he helped his readers move from a world of modernism to one of postmodernism. His influence on Polish literature was enormous, yet this theatrical inspiration proved even more fertile – without him, there would be no Tadeusz Kantor, or Jerzy Grotowski. French existentilists, structuralists, and deconstructionists were in turn sympathetic with his output. Though his texts fit the tastes of the most refined intellectuals, he remained a readable author of books attractive even at first sight thanks to sensational plots, grotesque characters, black humour, and his extraordinary flexibility of language, encompassing all registers.” /Z. Łapiński/

More information: Encounters with Polish Literature: Witold Gombrowicz with Bożena Shallcross

Zishan Ugurlu is a resident actress and director at La MaMa Theater and a member of the Great Jones Repertory Company. She has worked extensively as a theater artist in New York and abroad. She has recently directed Medea with Great Jones Repertory Company, drawing attention to a very specific dimension that explored Medea as an immigrant, exiled, investigating parallels between the myth and the current refugee crisis by collaging real stories, ancient tongues, and hackable audiovisual systems. Her directing credits include Fragments, Lists, and Lacunae, written by Alexandra Chasin, featuring philosopher Judith Butler as a performer at New York Live Arts. The Franca Rame Project by Franca Rame & Dario Fo, Agamemnon by Aeschylus (in Greek) , and She Talks to Beethoven by Adrienne Kennedy. She recently received the 2020 Gramsci Award for Theater in Prison. She teaches at Lang College, The New School University, as a Professor of Theater.

Lead image: Poster by Michał Dracz
Photography: Steven Pisano