Hałas

Cast: Agata Kucińska, Sambor Dudziński
Duration: 60 min

What does peace mean today? Is it possible to have it, to keep it, to defend it? And in the future – will it be possible? Given that our reality this week is different from what it was last week and different from what it will be next week? And there’s no chance we’ll manage to adapt to it in time? Will the barrage of stimuli bombarding our nervous system ever stop, recede, let up?

Or perhaps, if we want to survive in relative balance, we must shut ourselves away in sensory deprivation chambers or… learn to defend ourselves against it. Now. On our own. For our own sake.

Perhaps effectively protecting one’s own nervous system will soon become one of the most important – and most difficult to master – skills. Perhaps it already is. Perhaps new degree programmes will soon emerge, culminating in a ‘Master’s in Silence’.

Let’s not allow our phones to consume us, or let companies as big as nations shape our neural pathways in a way that ultimately leads us far away from ourselves. Let’s change this. Starting tomorrow. And together.

I want information overload to be taxed. I want the practice of separating us from ourselves to become illegal.

I want animals and trees to take over the world. I want meadows to grow in the city, so that we aren’t afraid of one another. So that we have no names. I want us to greet one another by saying, ‘Take your time’. […] I want everyone to be able to be, and to be, a philosopher. And for ‘female philosopher’ to sound just as dignified as ‘philosopher’. I want thoughts from the gut to be more important than thoughts from the head. (Małgorzata Halber, ‘Hałas’, Cyranka Publishing House, Warsaw 2024)

The performance is a one-person story about trying to cope with overstimulation and the struggle for inner peace. It uses visual art, puppet animation, spoken word and live music to achieve this.

Producers of the spectacle
Fundacja LALE. Teatr i Agata Kucińska
Partners: Wrocławski Teatr Lalek, Fundacja Lale.Teatr