as part of the Fabbrica Europa 2026 festival

Locked away in a refugee shelter, women, who have arrived from different corners of the world, enact endless games and intimate micro-performances to reveal their hidden identities.
They give expression to themselves in a language that’s taking shape in front of those present, a language they’ll never fully master. Teetering between audition and job interview, the tone of the encounter is gradually changing. The question of identity is taking the back seat but dignity is standing its ground, a dignity they can have NOW, not posthumously.

Inspired by Jean Genet’s The Maids, the piece, directed by Jaroslaw Fret and featuring an international cast, incorporates excerpts from Jean-Pierre Siméon’s Stabat Mater Furiosa and Dimitris Dimitriadis’ I’m Dying as a Country.

Jaroslav Fret is the director of the Grotowski Institute, and a founder and leader of Theatre ZAR. Beginning in 1999, he organised several expeditions to the Caucasus and to the Near and Middle East in order to investigate the old Christian churches (Georgian, Armenian, Syrian) and the Mandeans – the last living, ancient Gnostic group surviving in Iran. One part of this project is Theatre ZAR’s performance, The Gospels of Childhood, which has been presented in Poland, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Slovakia, Hungary, the United Kingdom and the United States. He leads the Grotowski Institute with Grzegorz Ziolkowski, where they organise numerous events – conferences, theatre and music presentations, exhibitions, work sessions, lectures and meetings – that correspond to the challenges laid down by Jerzy Grotowski’s artistic practice.

photo (detail): Tobiasz Papuczys