On Monday 29th May 2023, the music spectacle Life Is Average will be premiered at the Lentz Villa.
The spectacle is the result of another collaboration by artists from Szczecin’s theatres. The performers – Dorota Chrulska, Sławek Kołakowski, Krzysztof Baranowski, Lech Grochala, and Michał Starkiewicz – will take us to a world filled with absurd and an aura of mystery, like the one that surrounded Maciej Zembaty (1944-2011).
The spectacle’s protagonist was an actor, bard, musician and poet, cabaret singer, director of radio projects, satirist, scriptwriter, and translator (he knew seven languages), mainly remembered for his translations of Leonard Cohen’s ballads. Like probably no one else before him, he had a talent for combining in his performances elements that are not easy to reconcile, such as the ballad genre with a grain of the macabre. In an interview for Rzeczpospolita daily, he commented:
The demand for black humour grows in direct proportion to the amount of horror in our daily lives. […] In the Polish society, this kind of humour has become obligatory since it helps relieve the entire burden of everyday living. It is the kind of humour that is also exhibited by sappers, surgeons, patients, and convicts, and by all those who need to go through the rubrics of a personal tax declaration…
The spectacle’s authors will take the audience at the Lentz Villa to, among others, the heyday of the then cult broadcaster, Polish Radio Channel Three, on which an extremely low voice could be heard late in the evenings at that time. Its mysterious owner (who did not try to hide the debilitating illness that he grappled with) presented his extraordinary theatre on the air.
Our spectacle’s authors and performers are:
Script and direction: Paweł Niczewski
Music direction: Krzysztof Baranowski
Stage movement: Arkadiusz Buszko
Stage design and costumes: Agnieszka Miluniec and Maciej Osmycki
