Teatroteka WFDiF: Beauty
Sonia Mietielica, Agnieszka Skrzypczak, Aleksandra Popławska, Dorota Pomykała, Katarzyna Herman
Teatroteka WFDIF is a series of screenings of Polish contemporary theatre drama produced by the Wytwórnia Filmów Dokumentalnych (Documentary and Feature Film Studio). Since 2015, the Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute, in cooperation with the WFDiF, has been organising regular screenings of the latest productions of Teatroteka. The presentations are accompanied by meetings with the creators.
The main character, a participant of the TV show Piękność na piątek, returns to her family home and decides to start a "new, better life". Her participation in the programme and submission to a series of plastic surgeries at the expense of the TV station is the starting point for the presentation of multiple stories: a grandmother competing with an unknown, perhaps imaginary, sister, a mother unwittingly competing with her daughters, daughters competing for everything. The metamorphosis of Wiola knocks the heroine out of her indifferent everyday life, triggers their hidden weaknesses and obsessions. The panorama of characters is complemented by the traumatic legendary figure of the father, who has not been seen for several decades.
The play touches upon the problem of identity built of distorted projections of the loved ones and shaped by colloquial expectations. It tells about the need to go beyond the pattern of "happy life" – the only one and good for everyone. Beauty Iwona Kusiak's drama has been used to tell a story that escapes conventions: sometimes surreal, sometimes grotesque, sometimes absurd story about the instinctive need to be oneself.