After The Birds

Directors: Jessica Cohen, Jim Ennis, Tomasz Rodowicz
Music: Maciej Rychły
Choreography: Jessica Cohen, Jim Ennis, Suzanne Firth, Cai Tomos, CHOREA
Light: Gerard Tyler, Tomasz Krukowski
Cast: Dominika Krzyżanowska/Joanna Chmielecka, Malgorzata Lipczyńska, Dorota Porowska, Izabela Śliwa, Elina Toneva, Iga Załęczna, Adam Biedrzycki, Hubert Domański, Pawel Korbus, Tomasz Krzyżanowski/Kuba Pałys, Maciej Maciaszek, Sean Palmer, Tomasz Rodowicz
Premiere location: Współczesny Theatre (Wrocław), Nowy Praga Theatre (Warsaw)
Premiere date: 09-14 December 2005

After the Birds is the second part of the triptych created by CHOREA and Earthfall. It is a result of another international theatrical project which originated in Cardiff (Wales) in December 2005. Using two absolutely different aesthetics and working methods, the two groups jointly created a brand new language on the border of genres and styles. CHOREA and Earthfall confront ancient Greek choral songs with modern music, urban space choreography and fears of the modern world.

We have attempted to answer the question: what is left after Aristophanes’ The Birds, ancient Greeks and their culture, and what do we have in common with them? We must remember that Athens in Aristophanes’ times went through devastating wars with Sparta, collapsing democracy, political crises, plots and power struggles among different political factions. Social and religious values started to crumble. In such circumstances, there always appear some guides to a brave new world which may be created on the ruins of the old one thanks to utopian ideas, populist slogans, manipulations and operating exactly between the ones who succeeded and the ones who lost. Both these groups cannot exist without one another, so, in the areas where their paths cross, the power belonging to the first group and the dreams belonging to the second one must be taken away. Everything must be surrounded by a wall, guards must be employed and strangers must be driven away, as it happened in Cloud Cuckoo Land – the Aristophanes’ ideal new state. But from behind the tall walls, gods look like corrupted idiots, and people look like dwarfs deprived of dreams. Can a paradise on Earth be built only behind barbed-wire fences; do all world healing visions become equally bitter and dangerous when we start putting them into practice? During the play performed in a post-communist state, in the global terrorism era, we pose these questions not only to Aristophanes…