The 5th Anniversary of Jacek Kaczmarski’s passing. This show was prepared by Atlas Stage Productions Canada under the auspices of Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Toronto, to celebrate the 20th Anniversary since the official proclamation of the fall of Communism in Poland, in June 1989. Canadian premiere was on Jun 19, 2009 at Robert Gill Theatre in Toronto.

On the Very Corner of that Old Map
(Na Samym Rogu tej Starej Mapy)
Nov. 6 @ 8pm; Nov. 7 @ 11am and 7pm Nov. 8 @ 6pm
MiST Theatre; U of T Mississauga, 3359 Mississauga Rd. North
Parking map

On the very corner of that old map
There is the place I miss so much.
It is the Land of apples, hills,
tart wine and love.

A Stage Performance supported by multimedia (famous Polish painters and archive films) inspired by poetry and songs written by Jacek Kaczmarski.

…although I shot past you like a shadow…

Five years after Jacek Kaczmarski’s passing, I am listening to his Epitaph for Vladimir Vysotski as though it were the epitaph he wrote for himself. Kaczmarski did not spare his vocal cords or his heart. All in order to bear witness to his time and to the truth which is never easy, irrespective of the time in which we are destined to search for it. Kaczmarski was not only a singer, he was a poet as well, one that knew how to describe our common fate in a precise and erudite way, to describe our fate as both human beings and Poles. In fact, he was more than a poet, he was a National Bard in times of Poland’s enslavement, and also when our country lay bare her indigence and sins after regaining sovereignty. There was not a false note to Kaczmarski’s patriotism, even though he emigrated twice, both times exposing himself to criticism. The first time he left under Solidarity, only to be with us on the waves of Radio Free Europe. The second time he went seemingly for good, to collect mussels on Australian beaches instead of assisting us in the process of building a free Poland. Eventually, though, he returned for eternity, shoulder to shoulder with Thanatos, a comeback worthy of a picture by the great symbolist painter Jacek Malczewski. In the late seventies, he came to the Krakow Festival of Student Songs. These were very popular events at the time, even if hardly advertised in the public media under communism. And it was his song The Walls that won the first prize, becoming the milestone in his varied and extraordinary career. It paved a totally new path in the Polish literary and stage canon. He engaged his entire self in his singing, passionate, profound, and uncompromising. He filled in a shameful gap in the Polish tradition, probing our past, contemplating art, looking under the mantle of historic events in order to expose both the beauty and the sins of the Polish soul. It wasn’t an easy proposition; most artists choose to wear bright commercial costumes instead, turning their backs on their mother country, tired of looking on festering wounds. In my emigrant wandering, I lost my Jacek Kaczmarski recordings, listened to so many times. There were a great many of them, his repertoire unending, with hundreds of songs to his name, most of them genuine jewels. And his disturbing comments on our national identity, on inner honesty and the sense of being will stay with us forever, helping us to endure, to discern rays of light in the dark.

Aleksander Rybczynski