Polish theatre companies in running for Edinburgh Fringe awards

Caesarean Section. Essays on Suicide

The shortlisted productions are ‘Planet Lem’, Teatr Biuro Podróży’s brand new outdoor performance inspired by Stanisław Lem’s fiction; ‘Songs of Lear’, a project by the Song of the Goat Theatre which consists of crucial scenes from ‘King Lear presented in gestures, words and music; ‘’The Blind’, by the KTO Theatre, inspired by the best-selling novel ‘Blindness’ by the Portuguese Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago; and ‘Caesarean Section’ by Theatre ZAR.

‘Caesarean Section’ is a musical score blending Corsican, Bulgarian, Romanian, Icelandic and Chechen songs and has already won the prestigious Herald Angel award from the critics of the Glasgow Herald newspaper.

Close on 3,000 productions were presented during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Total Theatre Awards will be announced during the event’s closing ceremony on Thursday.

A total of 180 Polish cultural events are in the programme of the Edinburgh Festivals. Witold Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Orchestra is performed by the Cleveland Orchestra under Franz Welser-Most tonight. Tomorrow, the same orchestra is billed with Lutosławski’s Piano Concerto, with the German pianist Lars Vogt as the soloist.

Earlier, the London Symphony Orchestra under Valery Gergiev performed all of the four symphonies by Karol Szymanowski, as well as both of his violin concertos.

In an interview with the Rzeczpospolita daily, Valery Gergiev said he discovered Szymanowski’s music only four years ago when producing the opera ‘King Roger’ at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg.

“It’s exciting music’, he said.

The performance of Szymanowski’s symphonies with the London Symphony Orchestra will be repeated in London, Paris, Luxembourg and Frankfurt. Next year, the LSO is to perform Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater. (mk/pg)