Szwalnia Theatre and Kana Theatrical Centre: Tolerated Stay

During Modern Art Days we strongly encourage everyone to participate in artistic action Tolerated Stay  by Szwalnia Theatre (Lodz) and Kana Theatrical Centre (Szczecin)

14 May, 17:00 and 20:00
15 May, 17:00 and 20:00
Private apartment in Bialystok
ticket: 15 zł (presale), 20 zł (on the day) – available in Forum Cinema and at: http://www.bilety.bok.bialystok.pl/rezerwacja/termin.html?id=1114

Concept and execution/script, interviews with foreigners: Weronika Fibich
Script: Ewa Łukasiewicz
Installations: Justyna Rochala
Video footage: Grzegorz Habryn (PSM)
Photographs and a foreign family video footage: Ewa Ciechanowska
Music: Tomasz Krzyżanowski
Radio play editor, collecting materials and promotion: Patrycja Terciak
Collecting materials and promotion Elżbieta Mentel, Katarzyna Skręt
Consultant, translations: Joanna Paliwoda-Szubańska

“Tolerated stay” (legal term) – a form of protection, which allows a foreigner who has been refused a refugee status, to stay legally in the territory of a foreign state.

“[…] often a stranger is the one who questions – as if their mere appearance violated our peaceful existence, disturbed routines, challenged the blissful state where everyone feels at home and all the things are where they belong. The stranger is frequently diagnosed as a problem.” The actions included in “Tolerated Stay ” project come from the outlined above category of hospitality by Jacques Derrida. This concept of hospitality implies “deconstructing the feeling of being at home”, a specific kind of being undomesticated.

“Tolerated Stay” is the result of studies on the situation of refugees in Poland; meetings, classes and workshops for children from the Centre for Foreigners in Grotniki near Lodz as well as meetings with the family of Chechen refugees,  remaining in Poland under tolerated stay.

The story highlights the most important issues for “refugee existence” – the absurdity and hypocrisy of the system, depending on political and legal restrictions, memories and longing for family, homeland, normality and humanity. It exposes the condition in which personal experiences of war correspond to an uncertain future, the apparent safety and devastating stagnation that refugees from the countries in conflict found in Poland.

Venue – a private home becomes room for disillusion and meetings with witnesses to the truth, partakers but also with ourselves. In this community questions arise. Many of them become unanswered; many of them give you food for thought.