“Well, the thing about revolutions is that we don't see them coming.”
—Michal Zadara, director of Operetta

Music, fashion, dancing, and chaos—and a cast of 22—dominate Operetta, a wild fable about a young woman whose desire to be naked plunges a nation into revolution. The story begins with a fashion-loving count who pines for the beauty Albertine, yet all she wants to do is strip off her clothes. A rival suitor proclaims his love. There’s a duel. There’s a ball. There's panic, war, class-struggle, skiing . . . there's a camel falling from the sky.

Written in the early 1960s by Polish literary giant Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969), each production of Operetta receives entirely new music. For this latest staging, genre-defying composer and jazz pianist Leszek Mozdzer created an eclectic score that ranges from yearning ballads to punk rock. An operetta is the romantic comedy of opera; this Operetta explodes the form.

Director Michal Zadara, born in 1976, represents the younger generation of Polish rebel directors. A graduate of Swarthmore College, he won the prestigious “Polityka's Passport” for the year 2007 for his creative activity in theater.

Direction: Michal Zadara Writer: Witold Gombrowicz Music: Leszek Mozdzer Choreography: Tomasz Wygoda Stage scenery: Magdalena Musial Costumes: Julia Kornacka Lights: Ewa Garniec Video: Lea Mattausch Musicians: Dariusz Kaliszuk, Rafal Karasiewicz, Cybulka Marzena, Katarzyna Mirowska, Ewa Mizerska, Katarzyna Ruda, Magda Sniadecka Skrzypek, Elzbieta Wolenska Performers: Ewelina Adamska, Krzysztof Boczkowski, Arkadiusz Brykalski, Jacek Gebura, Michal Juzon, Ewa Klaniecka, Ryszard Klaniecki, Rafal Kronenberger, Piotr Malecki, Miroslaw Owczarek, Bartosz Picher, Michal Pietrzak, Cezary Studniak, Justyna Szafran, Marek Szczygiel, Tomasz Sztonyk, Marek Szydlo, Tomasz Sztonyk, Lukasz Wójcik, Bogna Wozniak

This show is performed in Polish with English supertitles. It also includes nudity.

Executive Producers: Lynne and Bert Strieb

Read blog articles about this show by clicking here.

Witold Gombrowicz (writer) is a key figure in twentieth-century European literature and theatre. He was born into a prosperous Polish family in 1904, but left for Argentina on the eve of World War II and lived in relative obscurity in Buenos Aires. In 1963, he returned to Western Europe to enjoy a brief glimpse of success before his death in 1969. He remains one of Poland’s most produced playwrights internationally, with professional productions of his works in over thirty countries to date in spite of the general ban on his works in Poland from 1939 until the mid-1970s. Gombrowicz is also a renowned novelist and short story writer, and stage adaptations of his non-dramatic works now make up a significant part of his legacy. His initial fame stemmed from productions of his three major plays outside Poland in a variety of languages. Operetta was Gombrowicz's final play, completed in 1966 but not produced until after the author's death.

Michal Zadara (director), born in 1976, represents the younger generation of Polish rebel directors. He spent his childhood in Austria, and studied political science, oceanography, set designing, history of theater and directing. Zadara graduated from Swarthmore College and the directing department at Cracow's State Academy of Theatre. He made his debut at Teatr Wybrzeze in Gdansk, directing two 2005 plays. Since 2004, he has cooperated with Stary Teatr and Teatr STU in Cracow, opening a number of works each year. In 2007, Zadara was awarded Polityka's Passport award for theatre, for creative activity and plays restoring the faith in theatre as a space of artistic freedom. The following year, he staged three more works across Poland, continuing to add to his distinguished resume.

Leszek Mozdzer (composer), a pianist, composer and producer, is widely considered the greatest revelation in Polish jazz of the last decade. Born in 1971, he has been playing the piano since the age of five. He covered every stage of formal education before graduating from the Gdansk Academy of Music, and became interested in jazz relatively late, at 18. His proper start took place with the band Milosc (Love) in 1991. Since then, the young pianist has collected countless prestigious music awards. Mozdzer has recorded music for film with several prominent Polish directors, and regularly works on scores for 20th Century Fox and Miramax. To date, Mozdzer has recorded over 100 albums, including 12 released under his own name. www.mozdzer.com