KATIE'S TALES Is Coming To The United Solo Festival 2023

The vocal and poetic piece Katie's Tales - pre presented in nine countries across 4 continents - is coming to the United Solo Festival this Fall. Performed by Agnieszka Kazimierska, this moving solo performance interlaces song, poetry, evocative physicality, and striking stage imagery to create the dream traces of one woman's encounter with love, war, ancestral memory, and a future still-to-come. Originally created at the renowned theatre research centre: Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards / Fondazione Teatro della Toscana, this exquisite theatre performance is not to be missed!

Katie's life unfolds during savage times, times of waiting and becoming. Her beloved left after a recent catastrophe, with a promise to return. Together with a couple of foreign servants, she lives protected in her garden, under the shade of her cherry trees - silent witnesses of her life and of History. Every day she receives visitors, every moment could bring the return of the one who left, and Katie keeps herself ready. Sheltered in the orchard thickening with the memories and unfulfilled dreams of many generations, her own desire is taken up into the maddening whirlwinds of history.

How long can she wait? Will she learn how to love again despite the excruciating pain of loss? Can she find comfort in the traditional idea of God or will he turn out to be a silent observer just like the cherry trees in her garden?

Step gently but resolutely into a powerful, storied, feminine world of colour, song, and love - despite and beyond the wars and other ruins that (capital "H") History keeps throwing our way.

Prof. Dariusz Kosiński, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, says "Katie's Tales is a complex and multi-layered meeting with Katie - a girl whose life's experiences and fate are encapsulated in the songs... [the name Katie] is traditionally used in Polish folk songs, poetry and tales, as a name of a female hero. Therefore, the encounter with Katie is a meeting with thousands of women whose experiences were excluded from and silenced by the heroic histories written and retold by men... [Agnieszka] transforms her solo performance into a fascinating dialogue with her Foremothers and - at the same time - her kinswomen."

Agnieszka Kazimierska is an independent Polish actress working internationally on a variety of projects including Katie's Tales. Inspired by post-Jungian and depth psychology, her works often explore historical, social, psychological-and-beyond phenomena from a personal angle. Between 2007-2021, she worked as a performer, theatre researcher, and teacher at the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, an international theatre research centre based in Italy and established by the renown Polish theatre maker Jerzy Grotowski. (*the centre closed in 2022)

More information about Agnieszka.

With and by Agnieszka Kazimierska (Poland)

Directed by Mario Biagini (Italy)

Photo by Renato Esposito

Produced by: Fondazione Teatro della Toscana/Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards (Italy)

Performance is in English, with traditional Polish songs

Location: Theatre Row 410 West 42nd Street, New York City

Date and Time: November 11, 2023, 7:00pm (55 minutes)

Tickets are available at https://unitedsolo.org/the-annual-united-solo-theatre-festival-fall-2023/katies-tales/

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