The two parts of the Finale Concert are performed both at 16:00 and 20:30.
The 20:30 concert ends with the award ceremony.

Part I: The finale of The Song Interpretation Contest

host: Filip Cembala
music direction and arrangements: Marcin Partyka
set design: Damian Styrna
visualisation: Eliasz Styrna
light direction: Mateusz Sikora
production management: Agnieszka Kozak

The names of the finalists will be announced on Friday 29 March late evening
The finalists will be evaluated by a jury consisting of Anna Radwan, Jan Klata, Michał Litwiniec, Agnieszka Szydłowska and Leszek Możdżer.

The awards:
Grand Prix – the Golden Toucan statuette and 25,000 zlotys,
The Toucan of the Journalists,
The Toucan of the Audience,
The Polish-German Cultural Society Polonica Award – 5,000 zlotys and an invitation to the next edition of the Rock & Chanson Festival in Cologne,
The Museum of Polish Song in Opole Award – a recording studio session,
The Monika Jaworska Award – a statuette and Tour de RAM: participation in selected programmes and podcasts of Radio RAM,
The ZAiKS Authors’ Association Award for the best performance of a Polish song – 10,000 zlotys.

This evening will also feature the awards ceremony for the Off Contest and The Master Diploma of the Aleksander Bardini Chapter.

Part II: Mirrors

script and concept: Agnieszka Kozak, Mateusz Sikora
direction: Ewa Kaim i Agnieszka Kozak
music and arrangements: Łukasz Pospieszalski
set design and animation: Damian Styrna i Eliasz Styrna
costumes: Magdalena Nikiel
concept and the idea of make up: Martyna Sikora
cast direction: Agnieszka Kozak
light direction: Mateusz Sikora
production management: Agnieszka Kozak
stage manager: Filip Zaszewski

Woman with a beard: Emose Uhunmwangho
Albino: Kamil Studnicki
Bullet man: Sebastian Stankiewicz
Demon of otherness: Marcin Januszkiewicz
Monkey man: Marcin Czarnik
Singer: Justyna Szafran
Birdman: Ralph Kaminski
Woman with a tattoo: Natalia Sikora
Strongman: Bartosz Picher
Tall man: Cezary Studniak
Diva: Dorota Pomykała

DIFFERENT IS GOOD. BUT DIFFERENT IS HARD.
Matthew Quick “Forgive me, Leonard Peacock”

In a world like any other, there are different people, and people who are DIFFERENT. They are not outlaws, but they live on the fringes, outside the community that stigmatises and excludes them. They do their best to be accepted.

You are too short, too fat, too thin, too old, too pretty. You are lame, deaf, cross-eyed, blind… You keep hearing this and fighting to be accepted. Only not to hear that you are DIFFERENT.

The director creates a freak show and gives refuge to individuals who struggle to navigate the “normal world” that often rejects them. But what does the “normal world” mean, indeed? Does a person who is too short not deserve equal treatment? Does someone with a deformed face not have the right to love?

In the freak show, being different is not a punishment or a stigma – it becomes a value. The demons are still here, but you have the chance to advocate for yourself.
There is strength and empowerment in the group.

The members of NAGO come from different planets but were brought together by a sudden, unexpected and mysterious force. Since then, they have been meeting and creating together with great pleasure, and the sum of their musical ideas is defined as indie/pop. The line-up consists of members of such bands as Jamal, Chilli Crew, Pikes or Humble Buzz.

They want to present you something you haven’t heard before, because – among other reasons – this is only the band’s third concert…

Martyna Baranowska – vocal
Antoś Mąkosa – vocal
Tomasz Księżopolski – guitar
Mateusz Galecki – guitar, vocals
Michał Nowakowski – drums, vocal
Kuba Wojciechowski – bass
Marcin Włodarczyk – keyboards

Producers: Michał Litwiniec, Filip Surowiak

text: Janusz Korczak
with fragments of Tibetan Book of the Dead, Egyptian Book of the Dead, Kaddish, Rigveda, mourning songs of Zande people (recording: Krzysztof Zygalski), and Olga Tokarczuk’s Nobel Lecture

script and direction: Małgorzata Wojciechowska, music and direction, music live: Maciej Zakrzewski
set design: Iza Banaszek, lighting design: Klaudia Kasperska, lighting engineer: Grzegorz Kołodziej, visuals: Michał Jankowski

performers: Małgorzata Wojciechowska, Maciej Zakrzewski, and Aleksandra Andrzejewska (voice), Hubert Hebdzyński (voice)

producer: Grażyna Górka

PRAYERS (of those who do not pray) is a homo religiosus howling, a story about the need to find and name a God, about longing for hierophany, the need to participate in a ritual, a struggling search for Meaning, about futile attempts at sorting out one’s humanity in the context of a deity, force majeure, energy, space… Call it what you want.

There is also a great rebellion, discord, fight with the deity, fight for oneself, getting lost, a desperate attempt to understand, reproach…

We are going to look for the sacred in this strange ceremony. We don’t know where we find it. We don’t know WHETHER we find it.

What we know for sure: our search is strongly accompanied with the words ECCE HOMO.

graphic: Iza Banaszek

Text: Elfriede Jelinek, direction, set design, costumes: Katarzyna Kalwat, music: Wojtek Blecharz, translation, libretto, dramaturgy: Monika Muskała, musical direction: Andrzej Bauer, lighting design: Paulina Góral, artistic supervision: Andrzej Bauer, Wojtek Blecharz, Katarzyna Kalwat, vocal preparation: Aldona Krasucka, choreography: Karolina Kraczkowska, set designer’s assistant: Anna Rogóż

Cast: Adam Woronowicz, Magdalena Kuta, Lech Łotocki, Tomasz Tyndyk, Paweł Smagała, Justyna Wasilewska, Andrzej Bauer, Magdalena Bojanowicz, Mateusz Błaszczak, Marcin Zdunik

Producer: Renata Majewska

The performance is not a reconstruction of events that happened 70 years ago in Rechnitz. Instead, it is an attempt to understand the mechanisms of collective memory. It is also a story about recent European history and European identity, with the experience of war and the Holocaust as a part of it.

Rechnitz is a small, rich town on the Austro-Hungarian border. There was a palace here, but it burned down shortly after the war. On the night of March 23/24, 1945 – a few months before the fire, started by Soviet soldiers, or maybe by someone from the village – at a ball at Countess Margit von Batthyány née Thyssen-Bornemisza, the most influential people in the area had fun: the commanders of the Gestapo and the SS, head of the Nazi Party, civilian officials. Then, around midnight, the bellwether invited them to kill. The grave of one hundred and eighty Hungarian Jews, labourers in the countess’s estate, previously locked in the palace barn, has never been found.

The story of the bloody ball was written by Elfriede Jelinek to the voices of five Messengers, presenting their own versions of events, in line with the play’s prologue:

This is how the world ends. Here’s how the world ends. Here’s how the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper. History always tunes its instruments but rarely plays them. But today is the day it will play with us. We are its instruments. We’re in tune now. We tune in with history. So our testimonies should sound and should correspond with each other.

Wojtek Blecharz, opera composer: – The actor becomes a musician, singer, beatboxer, his way of presenting the text is coupled with a set of four cellos that follow the narrative, accompany, but also have their own role to play, because they symbolize what is left of the palace orchestra from its former glory, forced to entertain the degenerate aristocracy and the Nazis.

Katarzyna Kalwat, director of the show: – Jelinek’s text shows how language participates in covering up, distorting and blurring guilt. It defends itself against the truth and smoothly deals with talking about moral excesses, crimes, genocide.

A cross was erected at the crime scene in Rechnitz, but it did not survive. So now, an inconspicuous obelisk stands by the ruins of the barn. The perpetrators of the massacre, thanks to the money of the Batthyány family, settled in distant countries, and the countess herself lived a fairy-tale life of a racehorse breeder in Switzerland. She died in 1989. There’s her photo with Queen Elizabeth II, among the things she left. The countess receives an award but doesn’t smile.

Photo Marcin Oliva Soto

Script, set design, directed by: Martyna Majewska, costumes, set design: Krystian Szymczak, music, music direction: Dawid Majewski, choreography, stage movement: Madlen Revlon, video: Michał Mierzejewski, lighting design: Jakub Jan Frączek, director’s assistant: Patrycja Wróbel, costume designer’s assistant: Artur Mazur

Cast: Justyna Antoniak, Paulina Gałązka, Kaja Janiszewska, Kasia Moś, Madlen Revlon, Ewa Szlempo-Kruszyńska, Magda Umer, Marta Ziółek, Maciej Musiałowski, Bartosz Porczyk, Cezary Studniak, Michał Szpak
and the Academic Choir of the Wrocław University of Science and Technology (vocal preparation: Małgorzata Sapiecha-Muzioł), students of Academy of Theatre Arts and The Musical Capitol Study

Musicians:
Łukasz Sobolak (drums), Łukasz Sztaba (keyboards), Hubert Radoszko (guitars), Łukasz Palkiewicz aka _Szatt_ (synth, dj, loops), Gosia Musidlak (1st violin), Małgorzata Lendvai (2nd violin), Katarzyna Płachta-Styrna (viola), Emilia Danilecka (cello), Łukasz Zgoda (saxophones), Adam Bławicki (saxophones), Jan Chojnacki (trumpet), Szymon Rybitw (trombone), Mateusz Feliński (French horn)

Producer: Karolina Gonera

In search of the aura and strength of common spiritual experience, rapture, mythical catharsis, the creators invite you to a concert-ritual to pay tribute to Art.

Inspired by songs, practices and dogmas of many faiths, philosophies and spiritual traditions, this ritual will consist of the evergreens of the festival, contemporary hip-hop, and disco polo hits in surprising arrangements and interpretations.

In the spectacular realisation, the soloists will be accompanied by a choir, many extras and big orchestra.

Art is a supernatural, metaphysical phenomenon, “the sixth greatest religion of the world, declares the author of the script and director, Martyna Majewska. – We are looking for images of the future art and the beauty of the community. Without agitation, without the need to comment, just for the celebration of being on stage. We are looking for an intergenerational, diverse, contrasting language of art that surprises with its juxtapositions. We are looking for abstraction, the only thing that works across divisions.

We thank the Academy of Theatre Arts in Wrocław for their kind co-operation and providing the rehearsal room.

Part I: Finalists of the Song Interpretation Contest
approx. 120 min

Directed by: Jerzy Jan Połoński, arrangements, musical direction: Dawid Sulej Rudnicki, set design: Damian Styrna, visuals: Eliasz Styrna

Musicians: Dawid Sulej Rudnicki (piano), Michał Peiker (drums), Grzegorz Bąk (bass), Krzysztof Bolek (guitars)

In the first part of the Final Concert, we will see the finalists of the Song Interpretation Contest. 

Malwina Czekaj 

Martyna Guzy 

Aleksandra Matlingiewicz

Jakub Mieszała 

Julia Szewczyk 

Klaudia Waszak 

Lena Witkowska 

The jury consisting of: Magda Popławska, Agnieszka Smoczyńska, Agnieszka Szydłowska, Piotr Rogucki and Jerzy Satanowski, will judge the performers during the Finale Concert and will distribute the following prizes:

• Grand Prix – a Golden Toucan statuette and PLN 25,000
• The award of the ZAiKS Authors’ Association for the best performance of a Polish song – PLN 10,000
• The award of the Polish-German Cultural Society Polonica – PLN 4,000 with an invitation to participate in the next edition of the Rock & Chanson Festival in Cologne
• Award of the Polish Song Museum in Opole – a session in the Recording Studio (recording, mixing and mastering)

Journalists, present at the Finale Concert, choose the laureate of the Toucan of the Journalists. The audience selects the laureate of the Toucan of the Audience. Journalists of Radio RAM from Wrocław will also grant the Monika Jaworska award (a statuette and Tour de RAM – participation of the laureate in selected programs and podcasts).

Part II: Reports of Reality
approx. 70 min

Text: Miron Białoszewski, script and direction: Jerzy Jan Połoński, music, musical direction: Mateusz Pospieszalski, set design: Damian Styrna, visuals: Eliasz Styrna, costumes: Magdalena Nikiel

Cast
Miron: Błażej Wójcik
Guests from the head: Jan Peszek, Renia Gosławska, Karolina Czarnecka, Jan Jakub Monowid, Ralph Kaminski, Mateusz Pospieszalski, Król
Guests from reality: Cezary Jabłoński, Karolina Biedroń, Antonia Federowicz, Kornel Sadowski, Katarzyna Domalewska, Barbara Pospieszalska

Musicians
Mateusz Pospieszalski (saxophone), Piotr Wróbel (suzaphone, tuba), Grzegorz Pałka (trombone), Bartek Łupiński (trombone), Piotr Chęcki (tenor saxophone), Oskar Torok (trumpet), Marek Pospieszalski (tenor saxophone), Grzegorz Tarwid (keys), Michał Bryndal (drums), Tomek Dąbrowski (trumpet)

Miron Białoszewski was an exceptional poet who defied all conventions, the primary representative of the linguistic poetry trend, an outstanding prose writer and playwright. 2022 is the year of the 100th anniversary of the poet’s birth.

– In Białoszewski’s work, you can hear music, rhythm and phrase. You get the impression he composed words into a melody, and he hid the whole world in their ambiguity. Unfortunately, however, there aren’t many songs based on his lyrics. Of course, we cannot forget about the “Carousel with Madonnas” with the music of Zygmunt Konieczny or the outstanding “Diary of the Warsaw Uprising” with the theme of Mateusz Pospieszalski. Still, the work of Miron Białoszewski deserves a much greater consolidation in the musical consciousness – says Jerzy Jan Połoński, the author of the script and director.

Producer of the Finale Concert and Song Interpretation Contest: Agnieszka Kozak
Director’s assistant: Filip Zaszewski
Stage manager: Magdalena Morawiak
Jury’s secretary: Emilia Militowska
Producer’s assistant: Marta Leśniak

Based on the play “Ants” by Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska

Script and directed by: Ada Tabisz, music: Dominik Skwarek and Johannes Niehaus, lyrics: Dominik Skwarek, set design and costumes: Magdalena Gładysiewicz and Mateusz Zilbert, mock-ups and puppets: Mateusz Zilbert, lights: Grzegorz Kołodziej, production: Katarzyna Górska

Cast: Julia Borkowska, Magdalena Gładysiewicz, Katarzyna Górska, Marcelina Kieres, Dominik Skwarek, Piotr Starczak, Mateusz Zilbert

Producer: Grażyna Górka

In the anthill, the power is held by experienced and cynical Worker Ants. Activities they undertake are carried out for the good of the anthill and for the species survival. First, they raise future Princess Ants and Drones, whose only task will be to breed new Ants, which will then be “fed” to become the next generations of Workers, Caregivers, Builders, Soldiers and… more Princesses and Drones.

Their counterparts in the human world are mothers and grandmothers. They represent wisdom and experience that young people do not have access to. Based on their own experiences and a sense of duty inherited from their mothers, they are devoid of illusions and sentiments. Their role is a mission that must be accepted with humility.

Ant young mothers, former princesses, are imprisoned in dungeons to not scare the next generations. Men/drones are parasites. After fulfilling their duty, they are expelled from the anthill, just like men, who are excluded from raising their offspring because “during this period they are only a stumbling block”.

In this exaggerated and somewhat simplified way, Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska presents a stereotypical image of the family and a disturbing vision of a limiting totalitarian system. Under the pretext of ensuring prosperity for the whole society, an individual is deprived of the right to self-determination.

The welfare of an unborn child exceeds that of the mother. The actual image of motherhood is hidden in the “dungeons of an unknown prison”. The wings of the young Ant-Princesses become a symbol of dreams, youth, beauty and self-realisation, that is, everything that they have to renounce becoming mothers. Motherhood ceases to be an act of love and a conscious choice and turns into a compulsion and a way of controlling the individual.
My choice or yours?

Photo: Rafał Wortolec

The group production was based on improvisation, creating dialogues from stage situations and writing together on stage. The director and concept by: Magdalena Młynarczyk; words and tensions by: Miłosz Broniszewski; set design and costumes: Nina Janiak: music by: Adriana Paprocka; the coordinating and promotional activities by: Julia Bochenek, Maciej Łabaz

The meeting is co-created by: Artur Kostrzyński – Maciej Łabaz, Alicja Hasek – Julia Bochenek, Ina Rau – Adriana Paprocka, Natalka Durczok – Nina Janiak, Tomek – Miłosz Broniszewski

Producer: Grażyna Górka

Apparently, everything in the Universe is connected by an invisible, unbreakable network. Trees in the forest send their nutritional value to each other through the roots when another tree is in need. Animals form herds to survive and protect each other.

I have never seen a bird going overseas alone.

As if all that exists is WE.

WE, consisting of many individual, unique I.

WE, in which there is Life and Death and Consent for both.

WE, where all the stories lie.

It is enough to exist to be WE.

I have a quiet, shy dream that my I and your I are a part of WE. 

Whoever I am and whoever you are.

That each I is included in the existence of WE.

I would like to let this dream go into the world. Because I want to let go of myself. Not to prove, not to deserve, not to match. Just be.

If you read it, if you feel it …

Come and let us be.

Let’s make a herd!

LET’S MAKE A TRIBE!

Let’s shout 

Let’s dance

Let’s sing

Let’s talk

Let’s free ourselves!

Ina

Photo Karolina Kratochwil

Cast: Ada Dec, Natalia Stachyra, Karolina Piwosz, Maja Polka, Jagoda Jasnowska, Olga Lisiecka, Maciej Dybowski, Juliusz Godzina, Wojciech Melzer, Maciej Kozakoszczak, Tomasz Osica

Musicians: Mateusz Dębski – piano, Alina Łapińska – harp, Wojciech Gumiński / Mateusz Dobosz – double bass

Producer: Renata Majewska

The performance consists of songs from the repertoire of the MAANAM ensemble, performed by students of the Theatre Academy in Warsaw. Well-known pieces in new arrangements, performed with youthful enthusiasm, accompanied by harp, double bass and piano, take on new meanings.

Apparently, the record company Wifon has committed to pressing the first album of Maanam in a million copies. However, in the turbulent 1981 year, a few months before martial law, there was a shortage of everything, including raw materials for the production of vinyl records, so the factory counter stopped at three hundred thousand copies. It was not, of course, the most significant problem for the citizens of the People’s Republic of Poland. Still, the modest bluesy ballad “Frenzy of heavenly bodies” turned out to be prophetic…

More than forty years later, these words can be used in protest against political oppression (Kora would certainly not mind). However, apart from poetry, we have better means of expression and action at our disposal. And the songs themselves – transferred from the rock scene to the theatre – shed the burden of anti-communist rebellion and became a story about the uncertainty of today’s youth. That is – of people who enter a career path in the arts industry, laid down by the law of money and chance.

Photo Vova Makovskyi

Concept, direction, choreography: Dariusz Lewandowski, musical setting: Tomasz Filipczak

Cast: Kaja Mianowana, Izabela Bujniewicz, Karolina Nowakowska, Magdalena Rossowska, Urszula Rossowska, Mary Pawłowska, solo guitar: Piotr Aleksandrowicz

PPA production: Grażyna Górka

Six women. Concert – performance. Male rock music on women’s lips and in women’s bodies. A Polish woman in Poland and Poland in a Polish woman. Perpetual motion, abstract, word, scream, energy, liberation, howl, strength. Here and now. Go!