Der Szturem. Cwiszyn
Produced for the Ester Rachel and Ida Kamińska Jewish Theatre
Medium
Theatre production
2020 /
2023
a virtual reconstruction of the Warsaw Ghetto
developed in UE 4.27
Der Szturem. Cwiszyn
Shakespeare's „The Tempest” („Burza”) becomes a starting point for reflecting on memory, the divisions running through contemporary Poland, and history's recurring demons. Yiddish meets fragments of the Ringelblum Archive and biblical texts — the Lamentations of Jeremiah and the Song of Songs. The collision of these voices builds a story about loss, violence, memory, and the possibility of rebuilding community.
A key element of the production is a set of projections built from photogrammetric 3D scans of tenement buildings from the Warsaw Ghetto. This digital reconstruction of a space that no longer exists becomes an attempt to restore traces of the city, while also asking where the limits of reconstructing memory — both individual and collective — actually lie.
The production has twice been nominated for the Golden Yorick at the Gdańsk Shakespeare Festival, and was shown in the main competition of the Kontakt Festival in Toruń and at the Interpretacje Festival in Katowice.
an impression of a city that no longer exists
The creative team also reached for early neural-network tools, using them as a novel way of working with image and archival material. This blend of technology, documentary and theatre offers a fresh perspective on the past, and raises the question of whether today's tools can help not only reconstruct a lost world, but also understand its memory more deeply.
Credits
- Direction
- Damian Josef Neć
- Set design, visualisations, costumes
- Maciej Czuchryta, Marta Wieczorek
- Production
- Patrycja Superczyńska
- Photography
- Natalia Kabanow
Full list of collaborators available on the Jewish Theatre in Warsaw's website.