Multilingual Adaptations

The Rozdział/Chapter focuses on processes and performances related to adaptations of national texts, which use multilingualism to shift the cogs of the rituals and mechanisms of national belonging, challenging paradigms of engaging with a difference based on (imagined) homogenous national identity. These are: international opera coproduction based on Pasażerka/Пассажирка/The Passenger by Zofia Posmysz and directed by Sir David Pountney (2010); Radosław Rychcik’s adaptations of Polish verse dramas Adam Mickiewicz/Adomas Mickevičius/Адам Міцкевіч’s Dziady (Forefathers' Eve) and Stanisław Wyspiański’s Wesele (The Wedding), created respectively in 2014 and 2016; and Rosaura (Spain/UK, 2016), adapted by Teatro Inverso from La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream) by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. The selected texts, and their interpretations, are powerfully written around their respective national identities, traditions, and collective memories. The productions—set in contrasting economic and institutional contexts—structure rituals of belonging underpinned by differences, deconstructing the homogenizing collective memories, dominant in their respective contexts and, in turn, reimagine the communities built upon them in relation to otherness, hybridity, and change.