Fog in the morning (Mgła na dzień dobry)   a surrealist mini-musical based on the poems of Kazimierz Mikulski Premiere 1995, Piwnica pod Baranami cabaret music: Paweł Bitka words: Kazimierz Mikulski, Max Jacob, Jan Adamski, Paweł Bitka directed by: Piotr Skrzynecki set design by: Małgosia Górnisiewicz, Kazimierz Madej performed by: Małgosia Górnisiewicz, Krzysztof Suszek, Kazimierz Madej adapted for television by TVP 2 in 1996       In his youth, Kazimierz Mikulski, the late eminent Polish surrealist painter, wrote poetry. At the opening of an exhibition of his work in one of Kraków's galleries, Małgosia Górnisiewicz, of the Piwnica pod Baranami cabaret, sang two of his poems set to music by the well-known songwriter Grzegorz Turnau. This provided Paweł Bitka, a young composer who had just joined Piwnica pod Baranami, with the ideal inspiration for a whole show based around Mikulski's pictures and poetry. This delightful show blended the grotesque with the lyrical to recreate the atmosphere of the age of surrealism. The cabaret's director, Piotr Skrzynecki, took on the artistic patronage of the project, and even directed some of the rehearsals himself.     "What you will see and hear is a beautiful, moving story about love, a dancer, tragedy, tears, even rogues, blood and a small town... And the words of these songs, arranged by Paweł Bitka, are the words of Kazimierz Mikulski, the great Kraków painter, who, it transpires, was once, in his youth, also a poet..."                                   Piotr Skrzynecki     The light is dimmed to hush the dancer's white nakedness just now someone cried: shame in the back row someone clapped the walls were lined with agents who hid their faces in shadow while seated the voracious flock lowered lids over eyes raised again and then lowered the lights are out: the dancer's breath reels in the darkness the public crawled up to the stage arms outstretched, mute on the chairs the severed heads are plaster casts yet they bleed                           Kazimierz Mikulski

Farewell Season ! (Żegnaj Poro !)   Małgorzata Górnisiewicz sings and recites the prose of Bruno Schulz premiere: November 1996, Piwnica pod Baranami, Cracow music: Paweł Bitka oraz Nelson words: Bruno Schulz directed by: Kazimierz Madej set design by: Kazimierz Madej, Małgosia Górnisiewicz performed by: Małgosia Górnisiewicz duration 45 min.       The main idea behind this play/recital was to sing the prose of Bruno Schulz. As befits a cabaret project, emphasis was placed on the comical elements of the stories. The work of Bruno Schulz - a great writer and draughtsman endowed with a brilliant sense of humour - lent itself perfectly to this type of interpretation. The mysterious characters and curious stories set in Drohobycz and described in "The street of crocodiles" and "The sanatorium under the sign of the hourglass" slipped easily into the light, ethereal cabaret programme. On the stage, Małgosia Górnisiewicz, in costumes of her own creation, transmogrifies into an illusionist from Milan, a provincial vamp, a mad aunt, a child, an old pensioner flinging cotton bobbins around like amulets. She recites short monologues and sings songs set to music by Paweł Bitka, plays the violin; the musical background is fleshed out with details from a bygone age - a pre-war hit or a lullaby in Yiddish... Małgosia is accompanied by an ensemble composed of violin, accordion, piano and percussion. Małgosia Górnisiewicz, painter, set designer, graduate of the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts, has been with the Piwnica pod Baranami for over ten years, singing, working on the interpretation of texts and playing the violin. She lives in Kraków and Switzerland.       "Farewell, Season ! You were very beautiful and rich (...) As something to remember me by, I leave you my adventures, littered all over the park and the lanes and gardens. I can't take my age fifteen back with me, that will have to stay behind here for good (...)"   Bruno Schulz, Autumn (translation from The Collected Works of Bruno Schulz, ed. Jerzy Ficowski. Picador, 1998)

Rimbaud's children (Dzieci Rimbauda)   a cabaret programme premiere 20 November 1997, Piwnica pod Baranami, repeated February 2001, music: Paweł Bitka words: Bartłomiej Brede, Maciej Dancewicz, Janina Garycka, Krzysztof Lipiński, Jacek Milczanowski, Robert Popiel, Małgorzata Sularczyk, Paweł Bitka oraz: K.I.Gałczyński B.Jasieński, C.K.Norwid, H.Poświatowska, M.Gebirtig, K.Przerwa-Tetmajer, G.Trakl, A.Rimbaud; performed by: Agnieszka Chrzanowska, Beata Czernecka, Dorota Ślęzak, Ewa Wnukowa, Piotr Kuba Kubowicz, Szymon Zychowicz, Elżbieta Banasiak, Małgorzata Górnisiewicz, Radosław Kaim, Katarzyna Weredyńska, Bartłomiej Brede as the Poet, Kazimierz Madej, Marek Pacuła and Rafał Jędrzejczyk as the Lamplighter of the Planty (MC) musical director: Marek Michalak arrangement of scenes: Kaziemierz Madej, Przemysław Śliwa; Rafał Jędrzejczyk set design: Kazimierz Madej, Paweł Bitka costumes: Maya Kozłowska scenographic consultant: Kazimierz Wiśniak drawings, programme: Sebastian L.Kudas poster: Idalia Zagroba duration 2 hours     ... about artists in Kraków in the 20th century A musical show about poets, painters, artists, but also "mere mortals"... Drawn to Kraków by the unique atmosphere of the city where talent blossoms, or simply by chance, a turn of fate. The wild fraternity adopts as its patron Arthur Rimbaud, the French outcast poet. One by one, artists from different periods pass across the stage: the Norwegian Dagny Przybyszewska, the Austrian Georg Trakl, and the Poles Bruno Jasieński, Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński, Zbyszek Cybulski and Halina Poświatowska. The carnival of famous figures, led by the Lamplighter of the Planty, is interspersed with unknowns: a rebellious young poet, the homegrown artist Tadek from the Kraków district of Kazimierz, the cellar dancer Grażynka, a tart who works the Planty park ring. A hundred years elapse on the stage and the 20th century draws to a close. The concert ends with a cantata about the Great Magus from the Hotel of Dreams, Piotr Skrzynecki, the founder and host of the Piwnica pod Baranami cabaret. The programme was in the process of creation before Skrzynecki died, but by the time it was premiered the young artists had had to add a song called "Where are you?" to the final "Hotel of Dreams" section. This was the first programme in the harsh new reality "without Piotr". How keenly we felt his loss then... The show was the work of Paweł Bitka, a songwriter. Many of the texts and poems were written specially by Kraków poets and members of the Piwnica pod Baranami ensemble. Like "Bursa 96", it was performed by young artists from the cabaret, along with Ewa Wnuk as the femme fatale and Kazimierz Madej as the MC. Two directors, Toporowicz and later Jakubowski, worked on a film version of the production. In February 2001, thanks to the efforts of Bartłomiej Brede, the show was repeated in concert version.       Rimbaud, Rimbaud ! Your children have strayed, In lanes, under an ill star, You put them down to sleep.   (Rimbaud's children)

The doll builder (Budowniczy Lalki)   premiere: Scena Of Groteska 19.12.2000; performers: Hans - Wojtek Terechowicz; głosy:lalka -Tola (Małgorzata Jasionowska), mężczyzna - Feliks; Szajnert, chłopiec - Filip Gardas, Margareta - Kicia text, set design, dramatisation: Paweł Bitka sound: Paweł Gawlik; music: Caliope; flet - Anna Kozłowska produced by: Małgorzata Sularczyk; poster: Wojtek Kubiena photograph: Adam Gryczyński organisers: the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts - Scenography Course, Scena Of Groteska   Extract of the play - (lalka.mp3 - 1,21 mb)       Hans Bellmer was born in 1902 in Katowice, then Kattowitz under the German partition. His father, a mining engineer, was a nationalist who later became an ardent fascist. He wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, but how differently things turned out. In Berlin the young Bellmer met an Expressionist painter, George Grosz, who encouraged him to devote himself to art. Another meeting that influenced him deeply was with Oskar Kokoschka, a painter who at that time was doing a lot of work on the figure of a doll that he had had specially made, in his desire to possess a portrait of his lost love, Alma Mahler. It was in this way that the Doll, soon to become the central theme of his work, entered Bellmer's life. In 1926 the artist established his own advertising firm in Berlin. After a few years, however, shortly after Hitler's rise to power, Bellmer decided that he would no longer work in advertising, or "in any other area that could directly or indirectly be of any use to the state", and in this way all ties that linked the artist with the Nazi-run society were severed. He left Berlin and moved to Carlsruhe (now Pokój, near Opole), where his family owned a summer home. In Bad Carlsruhe, on the eastern edge of the Reich, where life moved at a different pace, Bellmer was able to concentrate on pursuing his intent: creating the Doll. "I intend to construct an artificial little girl," he resolved. News of that "little girl" and her creator soon got around and in the winter of 1934, eighteen photographs of the Doll had already been published in Paris by the Surrealists, spreading Bellmer's fame. In 1938, not long after the death of his wife, who had been ill with tuberculosis for several years, Bellmer moved to Paris, where he stayed until his death in 1975. Throughout his life, in addition to many drawings and paintings, he also constructed several more versions of his Doll. The socially controversial nature of his art meant that he was possibly the only Surrealist artist to remain out of the wider public eye. Paul Eluard wrote of Bellmer's Doll: "Anything that one could say about her diminishes and restricts her."     ----- This dramatic story of Hans Bellmer's creation of his fantasy creature draws on his life and works, but only as inspiration needed to breathe life into the figure. It is certainly not a biography. There is much that is not based on the truth. Hans is on the perilous, winding roads leading him to love. To get to it, he decides to substantialize his fantasy. The deeply borne intimate thought takes such a strong hold on him that he has to submit to it. At the same time another powerful desire, to hold total sway over others, drives his nation to war and to a terrible defeat. Yet the results of the actions to which Hans is driven by his desire and the "curiosity" of the designer fail to satisfy him. He is trapped. Playing the creator and destroyer of the Doll he ceases to be able to recognise his own feelings and ultimately falls into a deep depression. He fights a certain battle, after which he flees. He has to do something with the evil he has encountered with the Doll. Like the knight in the labyrinth on the Medieval cathedral floor, his only way to his happiness and his Jerusalem is to face the Minotaur.                                                                                Paweł Bitka       "This ghastly pessimism in which I live and which with time turns ever blacker plants within my character a counterweight to the wealth of true sensual and notional miracles. Transfers, transformations and transpositions apparently impossible, provoking shock and incomprehension, are some recompense for the bitterness caused by having to live."                                                                                  Hans Bellmer         Galeria Dramatu - http://astercity.net/~dramat/index.html