The Square

Two boys, friends who are sentenced to one another in an undefined, enclosed space. The discomfort of their separation, amplified by the pressure of a threat felt from all sides, can only have an effect on the mental state of the protagonists. They mainly communicate through gestures and glances, and words, which have lost their original function, only return in songs, passing by like freeze-frames from a past life.

"The Square" is a grotesque tale of a relationship between friends with an incomprehensible war being waged in the background. A tale of two young people's sense of being alienated from each other and the world, the impossibility of dialogue in a time when all the basic ways of communication are breaking down, because hope for rescue is dwindling with every passing moment. There is no returning to the reality from before the catastrophe, no chance to retreat to the time before we were shut up in the mental cage of THE SQUARE.

Yet the protagonists persistently believe it is possible to change the reality that binds and touches them so deeply; they try to keep up appearances, their everyday rituals. These they arduously build from day to day, appealing to a shared past, to familiar patterns of behaviour, to the power of the relationships that bind them. Music becomes the only way of expressing emotions and feelings; it protects the mind from total breakdown, connects the fragments of a shattered image of the world. It lets us forget that a secure shelter can involuntarily become a cell, and a person who was so close just yesterday can gradually become oppressive, incomprehensible, even a stranger.

Can music save us from ourselves? What is the solution to the confrontations of war and young people? What is the secret to finding your place in a world that repels us at every step? How to contend with increasing anxiety and hopelessness? What happens to people in a place with no way out? This story in cages tries to reinterpret words like "friendship" and "true responsibility" for another person.

Creators Ewa Kaim Director Ewa Kaim, Stanisław Linowski, Łukasz Szczepanowski Script Mirek Kaczmarek Scenography and costumes Mirek Kaczmarek Lighting director Łukasz Bzowski Musical director and arrangement Dawid Sulej Rudnicki Co-author of musical arrangements Krzysztof Sokołowski Stage manager

Cast Stanisław Linowski Łukasz Szczepanowski

Live band: Łukasz Bzowski (piano) Grzegorz Bąk (bass guitar) Michał Peiker (percussion)

String Quartet Magdalena Ksiądzyna I violin Jan Mleczko I violin Krystyna Wasik II violin Agata Francuz II violin Małgorzata Szczepanowska viola Zuzanna Siepietowska Maciej Baran cello

THE PLAY'S NARRATIVE IS MADE OF SONGS BY Kult Lao Che Król Nosowska Manaam AND OTHER CONTEMPORARY POLISH ARTISTS.