photo Robert Jaworski
April 21st, 2010 – 6.45 p.m., harbor area, Bytomska 7
The Polonia Theatre, Warsaw
PANI Z BIRMY / THE LADY OF BURMA
by Richard Shannon
translation – Elżbieta Woźniak
The performance can be called installation; it combines three levels of narration: a complex soundtrack, a video projection, and the actress placed in a situation being for us a stage equivalent of a state of imprisonment. From time to time the three layers of narration interact and create the story about Aung San Suu Kyi. The story is not complete yet it attempts to arouse people’s interest in the living myth. At the same time it tries to deconstruct that myth and show dramatic choices – sometimes incomprehensible, sometimes even immoral – hidden behind it.
Anna Smolar
Aung San Suu Kyi – a Burmese opposition politician. She studied in Delhi and Oxford. She was a wife of British academic teacher Michael Aris. She is a mother of two sons: Alexander and Kim. In 1988, on the wave of students protests against politics of Burmese military junta, Aung San Suu Kyi founded the National League for Democracy. She was a General-Secretary of NLD until 1995 when she was deprived of that function by decision of the junta. Between 1989–1995 she was under house arrest in her family home in Rangoon. She is called a “Burmese Gandhi”, and supports bloodless revolution and national reconciliation. In 1991 she awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought granted by the European Parliament to human rights activists. Since 2000, with a break between May 2002 and May 2003, she has remained again under house arrest.
director – Anna Smolar
stage design – Anna Met
editing of projections – Wojciech Kliczka, Karolina Noińska
executive producer – Magda Kłosińska
performed by: Grażyna Barszczewska
premiere – June 27th, 2009
