The director of the play, Jakub Margosiak, took on a huge challenge, which he certainly mastered. He managed to create an incredibly spectacular adaptation of Witold Gombrowicz’s underrated novel. If you are one of those people who like the unconventional face of art, you will certainly enjoy the Living Space Theatre’s performance.

This is the second performance that Dr. Margosiak has created using Michael Chekhov technique (…) The performance was presented at the 14th International Gombrowicz Festival in 2020, alongside such works as “Polish Dialogues” directed by Mikołaj Grabowski, “The Banquet” directed by Tadeusz Bradecki (…)

It would seemingly be very risky for a collective of young artists to undertake a stage adaptation of Ferdydurke, and it could even bring disappointing results. However, this was not the case.

I list the names of these young actors and the director for an important reason. All of them are recent graduates of the Dance Theater Department in Bytom, except for Jakub Margosiak, who graduated from the Acting Department of the Drama School in Krakow and already has considerable experience working in dance theaters in Poland and abroad.

For spontaneity and unpretentiousness in the interpretation of the play Ferdydurke, directed by Jakub Margosiak.

It is something completely different. Something new, electrifying in its freshness. The director deserves a big round of applause here. With his adaptation, he introduced dance into the drama not as an addition, but as something that could actually replace dialogue and suffice for words alone.

As we sit down and wait for the performance to begin, our imagination tells us that this will be a classic adaptation of the play. However, from the very first movement on stage, we realise that this is something completely unique. The static nature typical of philosophical works is absent here – movement and dance dominate, intertwined with Gombrowicz’s dialogues.

The choreography strongly and convincingly emphasises the dangerous relationship between the grotesque and violence. Margosiak also proves to be a good playwright, who in his adaptation selects and arranges themes from the original in such a way as to allow the story to flow without subjugating it to an excessive theatrical form (…)

(…) Margosiak draws attention to the role of the fluid body, which is, on the one hand, a concrete, material biological tissue subject to physiology and affects, and on the other hand, a space of indeterminate, subject-forming potentiality that is always concretised in processes of socio-cultural interaction.

The actors did a splendid job – they threw themselves around the stage, tossing each other about in a hellishly uncoordinated yet delightful dance. I watched their movements with admiration, as they perfectly complemented the lines they were speaking. Each of the actors shone with their talent, making Gombrowicz’s work much more absorbing.

(…) I find particularly evocative the scene in which the bodies of the actresses and actors, like Kantor’s bio-objects, grotesquely fuse with school chairs. In this hybrid and hellishly dangerous shape, they intertwine into a human ball.

The actors from Living Space Theatre took on a hellishly difficult task. Ferdydurke is a book misunderstood by many. How to make its plot more understandable, more bearable for the viewer? The use of dance turned out to be a bull’s eye.

(…) the power of the question “Kaj dzias” – Where are you going? In its search for an answer, Living Space Theatre uses a universal and universally understood language – dance.

The artists from this nomadic collective are not concerned with satisfying sentimental hunger or myth-making practices, but with exploring what is close to the body. Sensuality is a path to experiences that may – but do not have to – turn into intellectual or poetic reflection.