Radio Mariia

The main production organised by Teatr Powszechny in Warsaw within the Face to Faith is "Radio Mariia", a play directed by a renowned Ukrainian director Roza Sarkisian. The premiere of the show took place on the 13th of January 2022.

"Radio Mariia" is a political fiction based on the radical imagination of female and male artists, activists and experts in social change. It’s a theatrical utopia opposing the present time – a harmful socio-political dystopia. The starting point for the play was the idea of a radio of the future – broadcasting on long rainbow waves and sharing only good news for the secular society that has overcome the threat of a climate catastrophe.

The work on the play was accompanied by a cycle of podcasts titled „Radykalna wyobraźnia” (Radical imagination), in which Zuzanna Hertzberg, an activist, talked with chosen activists that created utopian scenarios of the future – the speakers transferred to the year 2037 and talked about the effects of a fifteen-year-old fall of the institution of the Catholic Church in Poland. The podcasts are available on our theatre’s YouTube channel.

The idea of "Radio Mariia" was chosen in April 2021 by an international jury within the open call procedure organised by seven partners of the "Face to Faith" project: Teatr Powszechny in Warsaw, Teatro dei Venti in Modena, ANTI - Contemporary Art Festival in Finnish Kuopio, Divadlo pod Palmovkou in Prague, Sommerblut Kulturfestival e.V. in Cologne, Gesher Theater in Tel Aviv and Jam Factory Art Center in Lviv. During the application process, more than 400 ideas were submitted to all partner institutions, just Teatr Powszechny got over 57 applications from all across Europe.

This international project assumes producing 7 shows between 2021 and 2022, with different partner institutions being responsible for each of the productions. After the premiers, each show will be presented in at least one partner city of the project.

More information on the show – here.

 The play is a part of a European project "Face to Faith" organised thanks to the support of the "Creative Europe" project.