The performance is about how our personality can be transformed by a political-economic system that rewards opportunism with comfort. This is the logic followed not only by benevolent dictatorships, but also democratic capitalism. For the time being, the only alternative to global capitalism is exclusion, loneliness and self-torture.

We follow the story of a young couple who received a gift of an all-expenses paid weekend at a beachside spa hotel. The building is located in a cold and windy landscape, and is surrounded by nothing but ruthless nature. The hotel is a hierarchical system in which everyone has a fixed place. The boy is delighted and quickly chewed up by this new life: to conform to the expectations of others, he adapts to the hotel’s internal rules and loses his better judgment. However, the girl resists. 

The performance is sometimes realistic, sometimes absurd or even surreal. It is a big, classical tableau asking the question: How to proceed? It will be difficult to avoid the climate catastrophe precisely for the same reason why we are unable to create a fair social system for the long-term: we will always fight till our last breath for the comfort that we have won over the millennia.

Discussion with Árpád Schilling before the premiere – in Polish.

CAST

Veronica – Natalia Łągiewczyk
Jakub – Wiktor Loga-Skarczewski
Hotel manager – Ewa Skibińska
Rich woman – Anna Ilczuk
Rich man – Arkadiusz Brykalski
Hotel Housekeeper – Klara Bielawka
Waiter - Michał Jarmicki

Written by Juli Jakab, Árpád Schilling, Éva Zabezsinszkij
Text translation by Daniel Warmuz
Music by Marcell Dargay
Video design by Szymon Rogiński
Video assistant: Krzysztof Bagiński 
Light design by Piotr Pieczyński
Costume assistant: Bożena Zaremba
Light design by Piotr Pieczyński
Assistant : Krystyna Bednarek, Pamela Leończyk
Stage manager: Barbara Sadowska
 

Directed by Árpád Schilling

Read and download the PLAY in Hungarian or in Polish.
No unauthorized use in full, or part, is permitted without the expressed written permission of the Authors and the Translator. For further enquiries, please contact me in the 'Contact' section.

Photo: Szymon Rogiński

PRESS

• Marta Chodorska: PREMIERA „DOBROBYTU” W TEATRZE POWSZECHNYM, Warsawa Express, 13. 07. 2020.
   
• Michał Centkowski: Piekło bogactwa, Newsweek Polska, 19. 07. 2020.
   
• Maciej Stroiński: Be my guest, Prze Krój, 20. 07. 2020. 
   
• Tomasz Miłkowski: Ten dobrobyt, Dziennik Trybuna, 17. 07. 2020.
   
• Tomasz Domagała: Kto bogatemu (wreszcie) zabroni?, Domagała się kultury, 21. 07. 2020.
   
• Paweł Sztarbowski: Árpád Schilling: Strzaskać skorupę teatru. Didaskalia Gazeta Teatralna, Didaskalia/156, 01. 04. 2020.