Based on poetic fragments by Novalis,
S. Lem, S. Wyspiański, S. Weil, M. Blanchot, and own texts
What has to happen to change a person so much that they take on a new name? How to talk about a vision, which cannot be described even by the one who has had it?
Hymns to the Night is an attempt to answer the question: what happened “on the barren hill” where more than 200 years ago Novalis – the youngest of the founding fathers of Romanticism – had his most important inner experience.
The performance starts from the version of the event given to us by the poet, confronting it with the artists’ points of view, opening new contexts. Each of the five chambers of the Gardzienice Palace, where the performance takes place, is an attempt at a different interpretation of the episode that changed Novalis’ life and opened a new stage in the history of European culture.
In the performance produced by the European Centre for Theatre Practices “Gardzienice” there participate students and graduates of the L. Solski State Higher School of Theatre in Krakow and the Academy for Theatre Practices in Gardzienice.
The premiere of the play took place as part of the symposium “Sentio: Novalis” at EOPT in Gardzienice on 20.09.2015. The play was also presented at the International Festival of Wandering Theatres in Gardzienice and at the Forum of Young Direction.
Premiere: European Centre for Theatre Practices ,,Gardziencie” within the symposium ,,Sentio: Novalis” 2015;
Dramaturgy: Radosław Stępień;
Set design / projections: Iwona Bandzarewicz;
Music: traditional German, Polish, Ukrainian and Corsican songs,
Poster / Photos: Iwona Bandzarewicz,
Directed by: Maciej Gorczynski
Bogna Paprocka-Podlasiak,
“Post Mortem. Hymns to the Night by Novalis directed by Maciej Gorczyński at the European Centre for Theatre Practices Gardzienice”,
in European Cultural Space (EPQ): Cinema – Theatre – New Media, edited by Michał Jamiołkowski, Nina Oborska, Krzysztof Tkaczyk, Warsaw 2017, pp. 129-161.
Bartosz Bielenia
Magdalena Pamuła
Maciej Sajur
Anna Bochnak – Fryc
Kamila Banasiak
Kamil Mróz
At the end of the symposium in the Gardzienice palace a group of young actors from Krakow presented a performance of Hymns to the Night according to Novalis, or rather along Novalis, because in the performance directed by Maciej Gorczyński, dramaturgically arranged by Radosław Stępień, many different texts were used, which in a mysterious way have clear affinities with Novalis’ Hymns. Novalis was like a whirlwind, and his Hymns to the Night shone in Gardzienice’s palace with the black sun of flowing light.
Krzysztof Rutkowski, “Theater”
Gorczyński approached theatre as a tool for philosophical research – a choice justified by Novalis’ poetic practice, just as much as the structurally accepted principle of the fragmentary nature of the whole. The performance was based on the word – also taken from Wyspiański, Lem or Simone Weil – and played out as a series of stations in several rooms of Gardzienice Palace. In a manner that was pure in terms of acting, but allowed for various conventions of acting, with sparse scenographic and film elements and songs. The project departed from theatre, approaching the arrangement of an event – but it drew poetically on the subject and provoked reflection.
Zbigniew Taranienko “Didaskalia”
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