Janusz Głowacki
HUNTING COCKROACHES
Polowanie na karaluchy
Translated by Zdenko Lešić
Premiere: The YDT Studio Stage, 27 November 2007
Duration approx.: 1h 10’ and has no breaks
Directed and adapted by Veljko Mićunović
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ABOUT THE PLAY
Veljko Mićunović: ‘It is very important to emphasise that the production does not address the issues of Poland of the time, cold war, political interests, dissidents… This is no longer uptodate. We are telling a story about artists who have left their countries and left for New York, not the ones who were driven away. They have left with the belief they would succeed, convinced of their own quality. However, thousands of actors like Anka and thousands of writers like Jan are waiting in line to be given at least one chance. These two are too fond of their egos, they are too dignified for America, they are not prepared to deliver pizza or be window cleaners. It is as if they are waiting to become celebrities out of the blue, and in their anticipation their absurdly accuse each other, they bicker, they transfer their feelings of guilt… They can’t stand each other, because they firmly believe they failed because of each other. So they sink… and they sink… and they sink ever deeper into the filth they can’t find their way out of. They have sunk so deep that they can’t even go back home any more’.
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ABOUT AUTHOR
JANUSZ GLOWACKI playwright, novelist, screenwriter, short story writer and essayist, is the author of 8 plays, 10 books, 6 screenplays and 10 radio plays. Four of his movie scripts were produced in Poland, one directed by Oscar winning Andrzej Wajda. In 1999 his screenplay, Hairdo, won the Tony Cox Screenwriting Award in the Nantucket Film Festival Screenplay Competition.
In 1981 he wrote a novel Give Us This Day, which was stopped by Polish censors and therefore published underground. Later the book was published in France, England, West Germany, Switzerland, Turkey and Greece. In December of 1981, Glowacki, attended the opening of his play Cinders at the Royal Court Theatre in London. The Guardian called the play: "The best fringe production of the year." The London Times: "one of the finest pieces of ensemble playing in London this year." When martial law was declared in Poland in December 1981, he decided not to return to his country. He moved to New York in 1982, where he currently lives with his family.
Glowacki's Hunting Cockroaches, was originally produced at the River Arts Repertory Company in Woodstock N.Y., then at the Manhattan Theatre Club and more than 40 other professional theatres in the US. The play was also produced in Sydney, Toronto, Marseilles, Lyon, Geneva, and Brussels (starring Jean Louis Trintignant). Hunting Cockroaches was cited by the American Theatre Critics Association as an Outstanding New Play in 1986. It received the Joseph Kesselring Award and the Hollywood Drama League Critics Award and was named as one of the ten best plays of the year.
Other popular plays of Glowacki are Fortinbras Gets Drunk, Cinders, Antigone In New York, The Fourth Sister.
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ABOUT DIRECTOR
VELJKO MIĆUNOVIĆ was born in 1986 in Bar. He is a senior student of Theatre Directing at the Faculty of Drama Arts in Belgrade, in the class of prof. Egon Savin. He worked as assistant director with Jiri Menzl and Paolo Magelli, on their respective productions of Merry Wives Of Windsor (National Theatre Belgrade) and Italian Night (YDP). His debut as a director was in 2006, with the production of Don’t Walk About Naked (Slavija Theatre), that toured several local and international theatre festivals.
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CAST
