Nowy Teatr in Warsaw: One Gesture

We have the pleasure of inviting you to a performance within the 34th. Contemporary Art Days:

Nowy Teatr in Warsaw: One Gesture

dir. Wojtek Ziemilski

May 24th, 2019, 6 PM
Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic, 1 Odeska Street
tickets: 30 PLN, available at the Forum cinema’s box office (5 Legionowa Street), BCC/LZC’ box office (19 Warszawska Street), online and at the event venue half an hour before its start

discussion host: Dariusz Szada-Borzyskowski

Here is one thing that fascinates me: I don’t know how to talk about it. My words seem clumsy and awkward. The language I use seems inadequate to describe sign languages and the world of the Deaf in general.
To give some substance to my words, let me cite a number of truisms from the collection Truisms by Jenny Holzer, an American neoconceptual artist. These phrases seem the simplest thing there is. Until you look at them from the standpoint of sign language:
Listen when your body talks.
People who don’t work with their hands are parasites.
Words tend to be inadequate.
Description is more important than metaphor.
Abstraction is a type of decadence.
You are responsible for constituting the meaning of things.

One Gesture is a show about sign languages.
It is a show about communicating with the world – with the world of the hearing and with the world of the other Deaf. How does communication work? How are knowledge, emotion and culture transmitted, produced and processed? If language is the only reality we have access to (“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” – as Wittgenstein said), what can we learn about the world from the languages of the Deaf? What is universal about their experience of communicating, and what is unique? And come none of my friends have any Deaf friends?

Director: Wojtek Ziemilski
Set design, associate director: Wojciech Pustoła
Lighting design: Artur Sienicki
Music: Aleksander Żurowski
Costumes: Krystian Jarnuszkiewicz

Cast: Marta Abramczyk, Jolanta Sadłowska, Pavel Sosinski, Adam Stoyanov
Translation: Joanna Ciesielska, Katarzyna Glozak

official website of the festival