A musical show based on a song book of Leon Schiller who collected everyday songs performed by townsfolk, artists and soldiers in the first half of the 20th century. Schiller introduced this amateur and pop creativity into the National Theatre as A Market Booth of Songs. This selection of songs is staged rather rarely. The songs fell out of favour, even though the layer of sheer playfulness and humour conceals historic and erotic tropes. Perhaps the theatre originated from a dithyramb in honor of Dionysus, but our everyday culture thrives on songs, and this involves more than talent shows and the Internet, or even the radio. How to use old hit songs to get onto the stage? Is it possible to participate and sing your favourite song? Creators invited residents of Praga district in Warsaw to co-create the play.
“It’s amazing that we are so unable to play with the theatre and that we have so little love for it. Most of the postulates, criticism and uncompromising demands reveal the ideal of the Theatre: beautiful, ambitious now and again, and yet always bleak and gloomy. Even though most of our outstanding producers began as Schiller’s followers, almost none of them shares their master’s love for these charming vaudevilles, songs and dances, which today are unjustly associated with a lighter muse and which are indeed the substance and essence of the theatre" (Marta Fik).
The premiere of a performance at the Art and Society Festival Happy City.