Adam Dragun, Wojtek Ziemilski: Can theatre think?
Through his plays, Jean-Paul Sartre presented the idea of existentialism, whilst G. F. Hegel used drama to demonstrate political and philosophical dialectics. Since the 1990s, however, a notion has emerged on European stages that theatre need not merely depict thought, but that it can itself be a specific form of thought.
This is a form of thinking distinct from the discursive thinking of theory – a bodily, temporal and event-based way of thinking. What are the main tools of this type of thinking? How can such thinking be developed? And what can we expect from it? We shall attempt to find this out in a debate with the Polish director Wojtek Ziemilski and another guest.
The debate will be chaired by Adam Dragun. The guest speaker will be theatre artist and visual director Wojtek Ziemilski.
English
90 minutes
Adam Dragun
director, author and performer, but also the frontman of the group Berlin Manson. He is a writer, director and performer in multi-genre projects. He studied at Charles University and at the Academy of Theatre Arts in Kraków, and is currently completing his studies at DAMU (Alternative and Puppet Theatre).
His directing credits include the production *The Last Time My Parents Were at Komuna Warszawa* (Komuna Warszawa, 2022), *Prcat* (P*AKT, 2024) and *Repríza* – part of the triptych *The Slovaks Come to Life*. *Hymn for the 21st Century* (Uhol_92, 2024). At the end of 2025, his original performance *ALEX* (ARCHA+/ Batyskaf, 2025) premiered, a work that balances between personal confession, fiction and documentary. He also contributed to the stage adaptation of *Frankenstein* directed by Petra Tejnorová at the National Theatre (2025). Together with Olga Ciężkowska, he is the artistic curator of the *Based on a True Story* project and festival.
Wojtek Ziemilski
a theatre director and visual artist whose work has been presented in over 20 countries and received major international awards, including the Main Prize of the Zürcher Theater Spektakel and the Fast Forward Festival in Dresden.
His work expands the possibilities of documentary performance, exploring spectatorship and the potential for action. Combining devising, real-time composition, visual arts and various media, he creates performances that connect aesthetic experience with intellectual inquiry.
He teaches contemporary performance practices at the SWPS University, the National Academy of Dramatic Art and Warsaw University. He holds a PhD from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London.
Big hall
