THEATRE DIRECTOR THEATRE MAKER & LECTURER WWW.LEWICKA.ORG JOANNA LEWICKA Joanna Lewicka A prolific German-Polish Theatre Director Social Theatre Trainer & IBO Certified Drama Teacher Based in Berlin DOB 01/08/1980 Lecturer at Marie Curie University in Lublin Languages German, Polish, English, French E-mail [email protected] DOB 01/08/1980 WhatsApp +48 798 615 032 LANGUAGES German, Polish, English, French Tel +49 157 871 540 10 RESIDENCE Schillerpromenade 10, 12049 Berlin TEL +48 798 615 032 | +49 157 871 540 10 MAIL [email protected] Theatre Fueled By Stories And By True Connections With People Around The World Born in Rybnik in southwestern Poland, This transversal curiosity lead me to explore I inherited German citizenship from my Romance languages, Philosophy and Media father, whose own parents were Prussian Studies at the University of Konstanz before and Silesian. Our family lived on the eastern applying for Theatre Directing at Frankfurt side of the border during my childhood University of Music and Performing Arts, and often switched between languages. where I soon got employed as the personal My parents separated for a couple of years assistant of the Dean of the Hessian Theatre and then reunited in southern Germany Academy. I learned the craft from between Konstanz and Stuttgart when Hans Hollmann, Manfred Beilharz, I turned ten, only a few years after Poland had Christof Loy and Jürgen Drescher, and been liberated from the communist regime gained rich experience by holding numerous and a decade before it would join assistance positions and traineeships the European Union. at Schauspielhaus Zürich, BAT Berlin, My transcultural background might have Staatstheater Wiesbaden and the Ancient contributed to my way of seeing theatre: Theatre Festival in Trier. I always seek to tell stories that break For the directing debut I chose Merlin boundaries of established theatrical or the Desolate Land by Tankred Dorst, soon languages, canons and spaces. These “mixed” followed by The Party by Sławomir Mrożek. origins have also nourished my sincere After directing the first German performance fascination with different cultures, and my of Wolf-Gang by a Belgian playwright Tom desire to understand them thoroughly. Lanoye, I returned to Mrożek and staged his most acclaimed play, Tango. Freshly graduated, I decided to rediscover my country of birth by working with Polish artists and directing performances in the cities of Szczecin, Gliwice and Lublin. I also organized The German-Polish Theatre Conference - Artistic Terminal Kolberg to challenge traditional boundaries and facilitate networking and collaboration inspired by stories common for both nations. Parallelly, I started the pluriannual collaboration with the Polish Institute Düsseldorf which gave me the recurring opportunity to train German and Polish youth and stage numerous theatre performances in different spaces in Poland and in Germany. The rewarding experience lead me to work with youth regularly, including in three Erasmus+ projects in Denmark, Poland and Turkey. My bond with Lublin had been forged when I contributed to a social innovation project engaging prison inmates as actors in professional theatre productions. Once it had completed, I started a regular collaboration with Dariusz Jeż, an ex-inmate turned actor, by casting him in I Am Not Afraid Of You, Othello! by Artur Pałyga. Two years later we revisited Shakespeare by staging Midsummer Night’s Dream, created in cooperation with the Prison of Opole Lubelskie and with the Polish National Theatre in Warsaw, and featuring several inmates serving long-term and ongoing sentences. It premiered at the Hołda Human Rights Gala, with a word of introduction by the former President of the Polish Constitutional Court Prof. Rzeplinski, to a large audience sporting high deputies of the incumbent government and exemplary activists of the Solidarność movement. The production was later selected for the International Theatre Festival Confrontations in Lublin, and acclaimed as The Best Cultural Event of the Year 2012 by the leading Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. It was covered by press in Japan, the US, Dubai, India and France, and became the main topic of Magdalena Hasiuk’s book A Cruel Strange Side of The World. I was subsequently invited to the International Prison Conference at The Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens to deliver a keynote speech, hold a Master Class and conduct workshops. The Driveless that I wrote and directed based In 2018 I joined the Womenstate Collective on Goethe's Faust was shown over thirty times which enlisted female artists, underprivileged in the living space of an apartment hosting women (including female inmates) and the art gallery Piękno Panie, and invited to the Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw to create the International Festival Retrospektywy in Lódź. socio-politically outspoken theatrical My experimental project Vulva focused on performance Womenstate or The Choir for One female stories was originally staged in the Actress. Contemporary Art Gallery Labyrinth and was Dedication to women empowerment has also later invited to Ukraine and presented to an fuelled STRYJENSKA. Let's dance, Zofia! international festival audience in Poland. The based on the original diary of the Polish Polish Mother of Theatre, while based on true painter Zofia Stryjeńska (1891 - 1976), the first stories, tackled general social issues women in the history who disguised as a man regarding motherhood and was classified by studied art at the Munich Art Academy. the press among top three performances of The production backed by the CSK Lublin the ongoing theatre season in Lublin. Another Opera House, NEAR EAST Association and project, LubLove covered an exhibition, the Music Theatre in Lublin involved an a performance and a performative reading extensive research about feminism and dedicated to the theme of the social freedom, filming almost 100 years later of the perception of love based on personal stories actress's symbolic journey to Paris, Geneva and objects. It was included in the Kulturzug and Munich, and studio recording of the project of the Deutsche Bahn on the original soundtrack, playing by the Berlin-Wroclaw route and invited to filharmony. The performance pra-premiered the International Theatre Festival at the Polish Cultural Institute in Rome, Italy, Confrontations. It also resulted with a then premiered at the CSK Lublin Opera spin-off creative documentary reportage House, and has been presented with a great +LOVE, based on a six-months-long research success numerous times ever since, around of love and sexuality as experienced by people Poland and once in Belarus. aged over 65 years. In addition to the purely artistic activity, Most recently, in 2019 I created my first since 2015 I have regularly worked for the music theatre piece based on the libretto Khmer Community Development (KCD) The Land of Smiles. I have also worked on an in Cambodia within several cooperation open-air, multi-disciplinary project titled and development programmes. I applied Moments combining theatre, dance, and music the methodology of Augusto Boal’s Forum dedicated to the theme of happiness in our Theatre to capacity building projects of KCD society staged in Lithuania. and other local organizations that deal with conflict management, facilitate reconciliation and protect ethnic minorities in Cambodia. I am currently open to Since 2016 I am also a lecturer at the Marie establishing new collaborations Curie Sklodowska University in Lublin, teaching courses Theater in Practice at the and developing ideas for new Department of Theatre Studies and Principles productions. of Directing in global context at the Department of Political Science. JOANNA LEWICKA | CURRICULUM VITAE THEATRE PRODUCTIONS 2004 Merlin or The Desert Land by Tankred Dorst, Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, GERMANY 2005 The Party by Sławomir Mrożek, Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, GERMANY 2005 The Wolf-Gang by Tom Lanoye, Stadttheater in Gießen, GERMANY 2006 Puzzle by Szymon Wróblewski, Stadttheater Heidelberg (Festival Stuckemarkt), GERMANY 2006 Ich - Elektra based on Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss, Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach 2007 Tango by Sławomir Mrożek, premiered at Staatstheater in Darmstadt, GERMANY, 2008 later presented also at Staatstheater in Wiesbaden, GERMANY 2009 Andromache by Jean Racine, Teatr Współczesny in Szczecin, POLAND 2009 Ivonne, Princess of Burgundy by Witold Gombrowicz, a production of the Polish Institute Düsseldorf featuring Polish and German youth at the Music Theatre in Gliwice, POLAND 2010 I Am Not Afraid Of You, Othello! by Artur Palyga, Teatr In-Vitro in Lublin, POLAND 2010 The Madman and the Nun by S.I.Witkiewicz, Polish Institute Düsseldorf, GERMANY 2011 We Are All Well Together by Dorota Masłowska, Polish Institute Düsseldorf, POLAND 2012 Strange Bodies by Julia Hołowińska, The Centre of Culture in Lublin, POLAND 2012 Imagine Our Nation, youth production at Theatre London - Kingston, ENGLAND 2012 The Day After, Polish Institute Dusseldorf, GERMANY 2012 The Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, Polish National Theatre in Warsaw, POLAND 2013 The Death of Caliban by Magdalena Fertacz, The Centre of Culture, Lublin, POLAND 2013 The Driveless based on Faust by J.W.Goethe, Piękno Panie Gallery in Lublin, POLAND 2013 NippleJesus by Nick Hornby, Kunsthalle Rostock and Stage 602 in Rostock, GERMANY 2013 My Anxiety Is Carrying A Weapon by Mateusz Pakuła, The Centre