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A performance that demands a radical redefinition of the notion of national culture. It becomes an expression of the need for integration of migrant creators, broadening the concept of national acting practices. Can theatre be a new tower of Babel?

Poland is in a unique moment. Over the last 3 years, due to the wave of mass economic migration in Poland, there have been rapid and radical changes in the structure of society. In Warsaw alone, the latest estimates say that there are 150,000 foreigners - this means that they already constitute approx. This means that they constitute about 10% of the city's population. In 2016, there were half as many registered foreigners in the whole country as today - less than 300 thousand. Therefore, the issue of cultural identity of contemporary Poland and the space left in it for foreigners and immigrants becomes crucial. There are no national integration systems, thanks to which foreign women and foreigners could safely and steadily build their future in Poland. Values such as openness, liberalism and progressiveness do not always go hand in hand with the elementary experience of excluded strangers, "strangers" trying to find their place in Poland. For us, creators and theatre creators, social changes reflected in the space of culture: in theatre and - more broadly - in the artistic labour market become equally important. The phenomenon of the "glass ceiling" occurs equally strongly in theatre and film: unemployed actors of foreign origin do not find employment in state cultural institutions. Theatre, traditionally understood as a space of socially engaged criticism, a place of avant-garde research and an institution of struggle for freedom, becomes in a perverse way a tool for strengthening the divisions that it declares to fight.

The project uses the personal experience of invited migrant artists and migrant artists to face the need to redefine the meaning of being an actor and an inhabitant of Poland. We are confronted with a sense of alienation and a new meaning of everyday struggles from a foreign perspective. Thus, the project is a contribution to the research on the essence of acting art in the contemporary multicultural and globalized world. We analyze the tension between the creative dimension of an actor's work and building a statement based on his cultural identity. The aim is to answer questions concerning the strategy that a migrant actor can take in order to get a chance to work in his profession. Does he have to and is he able to turn into a "true Pole" by getting rid of his own identity, accent, tradition and skin colour? These experiences help us to formulate our common dreams and plans for the future. The starting point is to imagine a national culture that is integrative, taking into account the diverse experiences and cultural conditions of people. The aim is to bring about a lasting change, for example in the micro-scale, in which the invited artists have a chance to break through the glass ceiling.