„Devil...” at Studyjny Theatre
All news
POLSKI
1
21. 10. 2016. Department
Acting

Rector Mariusz Grzegorzek and our acting students - a team of equals working towards the common goal - staging the play based on John Osborne’s “The Devil Inside Him”. The premiere on 22 October, 2016

"I asked for love and you made me hate" says Huw, (possessed by a devil?), a protagonist from John Osborne’s play to be played by Maciej Musiałowski. – Is he an oversensitive poet, or a psychopath and a murderer? – remarks the director Mariusz Grzegorzek – that’s what’s so thrilling about the text – everything is so ambivalent.

Set in 1950s in a Methodist community in the Welsh Valleys, The Devil Inside Him tells the story of Huw Prosser, a young man who desperately searches for a way to express himself, and as he reaches out for the love he so urgently needs, he unearths the dark and wild side of a man who has never been understood and finds his thoughts turning to murder…

Mariusz Grzegorzek cast the following students in his play: Aleksandra Chapko, Aleksandra Przesław, Marianna Zydek, Cezary Kołacz, Wojciech Lato, Maciej Musiałowski and Tomasz Marczyński.

- I picked a difficult and seemingly ungrateful text which required to be adapted, developed and reinterpreted – says Mariusz Grzegorzek, who adapted John Osborne's play translated by Małgorzata Semil.
– Although imperfect it seduced me. It was written by a 19-year-old playwright with naive youth intransigence, with courage which allows to say everything what's wrong with the world and throw it in its face; with faith, which I probably lack now, faith making us believe that with zeal and engagement it is possible to change things– says the director.

John Osborne, a representative of a literary movement in Britain known as Angry Young Man, is mostly recognized as the author of the play „Look Back in Anger”. His first play “The Devil Inside Him” was briefly produced in 1950 and only recently rediscovered to be staged again in Great Britain. (For example, it was staged by The White Bear Theatre in 2012). It has never been staged in Poland so the performance which is being prepared by the director Mariusz Grzegorzek and Lodz Film School acting students at the Lodz Studyjny Theatre will be its Polish premiere.

The students are working together with the Film School’s Rector, an artist with huge experience in theatre plays direction, who apart from regular work in Lodz Jaracza Theatre also directed plays which were staged at the Old Theatre in Cracow and Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw. - We are all working arm in arm as a team of equals – talks about their work with the director a student of acting Wojciech Lato, who plays Mr Prosser – We don’t really think we’re working with the Rector on a diploma play, that it’s the most important thing for us at the finish of our studies. We are all here to create together some world and give it to the audience – that’s what we are concentrating on. – For us it’s a double meeting, firstly, with an interesting artist and secondly with the text. We are working in a free and creative atmosphere, looking for ideas, analyzing and penetrating the characters, and thank to this adaptation there’s plenty to act! And as for the text it reveals a dark world with evil present in it but at the same time it is not clear where the evil comes from. The Devil? If he exists, then in whom? We would like to allow everybody in the audience to look for him themselves. – adds Aleksandra Przesław who plays Huw’s mother, Mrs Prosser.

It might seem that in a British play from 1950s one will not find any relevance to life in contemporary Poland – nothing more misleading. Let’s take religion, for example, which perceived in a narrow sense restricts instead of liberating; the system of values based on religion is about to become a common law for everybody whereas it should be a matter of personal choice; the sensation of suffocating – all this, unfortunately, is becoming a part of life nowadays. Many of us feel somehow cornered and smothered. The time has come when freedom, expression, the right to a free personal choice are being blocked in a mechanical way. It leads to a catastrophe and it will neither bring social or moral order – says the director.

The premiere has been scheduled for 22, October. The director, Mariusz Grzegorzek, remarks on his work with the students of acting. Although they are still students at the very beginning of their acting careers there’s no lenient treatment. On the contrary, I find work with young people thrilling and energizing. With them, it is easier to create something exceptional because they are fresh, full of enthusiasm and determination. If only could I keep up with them physically we’d work 16 hours a day and everybody would be totally devoted. They ooze the kind of energy I live off myself like a vampire.

See the trailer: https://vimeo.com/186258505