Description: The legendary Polish theater group, Theater of the Eighth Day, on its first-ever visit to the United States. In November, Theater of the Eighth Day will present its newest play, The Files (Teczki)

Please note: the Saturday November 15th matinee performance will be in Polish

The Files, directed by Ewa Wójciak and Marcin Kęszycki, the founders and directors of the Theatre of the Eighth Day, premiered in Poznan, Poland, on January 10th, 2007, and was recognized by critics as one of the most important performances of the last few years. The Files is a special and unusual performance for the Theatre of the Eighth Day (famous for fighting the regime only through art), because it uses Secret Police reports on the Theatre’s actors written during the period from 1975 to 1983 (reports that by definition also covered the actors’ contacts, friendships, and meetings), juxtaposed with the actors’ private letters at the time the reports were written, as well as parts of old performances to which the reports referred. For the sake of clarity and because the reports were so voluminous, the company decided to narrow the action of the play to the 1970s, since that was when they were active only as artists. (Later, in the 80s, they began to be more directly active in politics.). The inspiration for this play was their discovery of a typical report on one of their earlier plays that was written by a Secret Police officer from Crakow, whose intellectually over-ambitious analysis of the play’s subversive tendencies was so grotesquely uncomprehending that it was hilarious. Tickets for this event will be: $10 for adults, $8 for students and seniors and will be available at www.bloomingtonarts.info. Special Polish language production at 2:30 pm, Saturday, November 15th. More information about this production can be found at www.indiana.edu/~polisht or by calling 812.855.0207.

Participating artists: Theater of the Eigth Day