The Life and Death of Mr. Hersh Libkin from Sacramento, CA
A Holocaust survivor immigrates from Poland to the US and plans to build his career in Hollywood. He wins a casting competition organized by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and becomes an actor. It looks like his American Dream is coming true. However, things get complicated when his past attracts the interest of the FBI. Could he be part of an international Communist conspiracy?
In March 2022, the play received an award from the international EURODRAM competition, a biannual competition where a jury selects dramatic texts and recommends them for translation into a foreign language (click here for more information). In 2023, the play was nominated for the prestigious Paszporty Polityki award and received: Odkrycia Empiku Award, the Kraków Book of the Month Award, and Wawrzyn 2022 – Warmia and Mazuria Literary Award. It premiered at the Żeromski Theatre in Kielce on 25 March 2023 under the direction of Łukasz Kos.
“The story has many clever paths, so let's not let it fool us: Hersh Libkin from Sacramento, California, is in fact Hersz Libkin from the city of Łódź. It's pure irony that he settled in a city named after a Christian rite in a state whose name derives from Islamic culture. His multi-threaded story, which runs through Auschwitz, Hollywood and Woodstock, is about the price you pay for who you are, who you want to become and how others see you. It is also about who you love and what you would prefer to forget. With this angry, Brechtian drama, Ishbel Szatrawska has set the bar high.” – Jerzy Jarniewicz
The play was written in June and July 2021 and published in Polish by Wydawnictwo Cyranka. It premiered on 21 April 2022 and is available in print and as an e-book. Cover design by: © Plakiat | Maks Bereski
To purchase the print version, click here.To purchase the e-book, click here.
Free Shooter
The action takes place during the Iraq War, also known as the Second Gulf War. The starting point is the arrival of a Polish photojournalist to Baghdad, which has plunged into chaos. The text also indirectly refers to the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, Babylonian mythology and August Strindberg's To Damascus. The main character's doppelgänger is a sniper cut off from his squad.
The play was created as part of the DRAMATOPISANIE scholarship competition organized by the Zbigniew Raszewski Theater Institute in Warsaw.
Written in October 2021, the play is available in print in Polish.
Click here to purchase.
Katerina's Absence
In December 1985, the British poet Christopher Reid wrote a book of poems and signed it as Katerina Brac, a fictitious poetess from an undefined country behind the Iron Curtain, while naming himself as the translator of the book. This hoax is the starting point for this play, in which Katerina Brac visits the UK and encounters the London literary world. Is there a simulacrum of an Eastern European intellectual / poetess / woman? What does it take for her to be perceived “real” in the West? And what is “real” in a country ruled by Margaret Thatcher that is constantly shaken by strikes and riots?
The play was written in September 2020 and is available in Polish free of charge as a downloadable PDF here.
Written as part of the Creative Scholarship of the City of Kraków
Totentanz: Black Night, Black Death
March 2020, Bergamo, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Francesca, a former model and her husband, Luca, a television host, have invited some neighbors to an illegal dinner. This innocent social evening gradually turns into a quarrel over the pandemic, Italy, European values, social solidarity, and political and ideological views in the crisis.
The play is built on structures drawn from commedia dell’arte: the protagonists come from various regions of Italy and personify the stereotypical attributes associated with dell’arte characters, yet the conflict rests on twenty-first-century divisions. Venetian wealth and Sicilian poverty, the refugee crisis in Lampedusa, immigrant labor, the breakdown of the health system during the pandemic, the collapse of faith in European solidarity—these are only some of the subjects the drama raises. The story of the murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini in 1975 hovers over everything like a sinister omen—this was a homophobic and political crime that smacked of wild capitalism and the fascist history of Italy and Europe.
Comedy mixes with tragedy, mythology with the global problems of the twenty-first century. The Italian context turns out to be merely a costume for the challenges standing before most of the societies of the West.
Totentanz: Black Night, Black Death was written between March and June 2020 and published by the renowned Polish theater magazine Dialog (No. 2/2021). It was a finalist for a Polish national award, the Gdynia Dramaturgical Prize, in 2021. It was shortlisted by the Stückemarkt contest ast part of Theatertreffen – Berliner Festspiele 2022.
International performative readings of the play include the International Voices Project in Chicago, IL (September 28th, 2022) and DramaPanorama at English Theatre in Berlin, Germany (May 26th, 2023).
The play has been translated into:
• English, by Søren Gauger
• German, by Andreas Volk
• Ukrainian, by Nina Zakhozhenko
• Danish, by Paweł Partyka and Frej Larsen
The Polish version play is only available for purchase as a downloadable PDF. All print copies of Dialog have been sold out. To purchase the PDF file click here.
For other languages, please contact the author.
The Hunt
The play tells the story of a young man who returns to his hometown to visit his parents and goes hunting with his father. The forest becomes an arena for the release of repressed emotions. The growing tension between father and son awake hidden regrets and increasing rivalry.
The televised version of The Hunt was directed by Julia Ruszkiewicz as part of the Teatroteka program by Polish State Television. Ruszkiewicz won awards for best filmed theater at the Interational LogCinema Festival in Buenos Aires in June 2022 and the Interpretacje Festival in Katowice in November 2022. The play premiered on stage at the Mickiewicz Theater in Częstochowa under the direction of Piotr Pacześniak on 7 October 2023.
The play was written in 2019 and published in the renowned Polish theater magazine Dialog (No. 4/2020). It is available in Polish for purchase in print and as a downloadable PDF file.
To purchase the print version, click here.
To purchase the PDF file, click here.
Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear
This play combines various inspirations and themes ranging from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining to Jon Krakauer’s Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, Igor Stavinsky’s The Rite of Spring, to the sermons of American preachers from colonial times to today, Native American mythology and Interent hate speech.
Created as part of the drama workshop “Our Voice” at the Helena Modrzejewska National Stary Theater in Kraków. The workshop was created, coordinated and led by Agata Dąbek, Director of Playwrights at the Stary Theater. Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk, Marta Sokołowska and Jolanta Janiczak also led workshops during the program.
Completed in February 2019. It was published in December 2019 in the post-workshop e-anthology available free of charge on the Stary Theater website.
The e-anthology is available in Polish free of charge as a downloadable PDF file: click here.