Thursday, April 24, 2025 – Saturday, April 26, 2025, at 7:30 PM
NYU Skirball
566 LaGuardia Pl, New York, NY 10012
Tickets

Show Notes: Run Time 2:20 h. No intermission. 
This production is performed in Polish with English subtitles.

The U.S. premiere of Olga Ravn’s dystopian sci-fi masterpiece arrives in New York, marking the highly anticipated debut of a renowned Polish theatre director.

The story of The Employees unfolds in an undetermined near future, on a spaceship carrying people and humanoid robots, with Earth having been annihilated. The crew of the spaceship 6000, overseen by a mysterious organization, is on a mission to explore a distant planet called the New Discovered. Among them are both humans and humanoid robots, though it’s unclear who’s who. This dark satire follows the crew’s reflections on consciousness and identity through fragmented reports left by the spaceship’s crew.

Directed by Łukasz Twarkowski, this visually striking adaptation of Olga Ravn‘s acclaimed novel offers a mix of theater, film, and installation in an exploration of what it means to be human.

PRODUCTION GUIDANCE: This production is performed in Polish with English surtitles. Contains nudity, strobe lights, smoke, and very loud music. The performance is not recommended for people with epilepsy.

Łukasz Twarkowski is a Polish born creator of multimedia performances combining theatre and visual arts. He places his projects in the context of extending reality through multimedia. A crucial element of Twarkowski’s creative work is investigating the ability and limitations of theatre as a medium and tool of communication. By permanent deconstruction of narratives, questioning the fixed habits of the audience and by meaningful usage of new media, Twarkowski creates a new, original language of stage performance based on multimedia and, more widely, digital technologies. His works have been performed at the most important festivals and stages of Europe. Currently, he is an associated artist of Onassis Stegi in Athens. teatrstudio.pl/the-employees

Photo credit: Natalia Kabanow

The project is supported by the Adam Mickiewicz institute.