The Mother Tickets

For its 25-year jubilee Kropka Theatre returns to Sydney with its classic piece - The Mother.

S.I. Witkiewicz was a genius in between First and Second World War Eastern European avant-garde artist, modernist, a precursor to absurdism in theatre, painting, architecture and philosophy. He postulated that theatre should not be based on psychological reality but on "pure form," like experimental painting.

The Mother, a baroness who from love did a mésalliance and married a river pirate, Albert, who finally got hanged for his crime. The mother loves her son, Leon, but she also manipulates him. Leon is an intellectual, and a revolutionary of sorts. He gets married and does dishonest business for high life making the mother go blind and finally she dies. While Leon is grieving over the mother’s corpse, a young woman enters – his mother in the age of being pregnant with him. She says that the corpse of the dead mother is in fact a mannequin but there is nothing better than ‘pure form of certain events congealed in the infinity of existence’. The everyday reality is more absurd than what we call absurd as such.

Jolanta Juszkiewicz - creator and performer represents a rare phenomenon of a woman who independently and continuously runs Kropka Theatre for 25 years. Her works and master classes internationally recognised are presented in about 30 countries in Australia, East and West Europe, Scandinavia, Caucasia, Central Asia, Near & Middle East, South America.

"A tiny studio theatre, a stage draped in great tangles of red wool; a single actress, tall and thin in black, with a Kantor-like white mask of a face, delivering a monologue in eloquent English. Jolanta Juszkiewicz gives a quivering intense performance, as both mother and son; and the show stands as a brief but rich and enjoyable introduction to the work of an important figure in theatre." - Joyce McMillan, The Scottsman, Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Author: Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz

Director/Cast: Jolanta Juszkiewicz

Co-director: Anatoly Frusin

Music: Max Lyandvert