Press
“Ferociously unpacks and jettisons the nationalistic-sentimental baggage that has been attached to the composer’s name and legacy in a bid to reclaim a fuller identity for the paradoxical man behind the music.”
“This remarkable actress embodies the craft of acting at its most passionately committed.”
“Opens an intriguing window onto a culture wrestling with one of its icons, as if an American troupe were deconstructing the mystique surrounding George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.”
“Wysocka confides in the audience, she rants, she expostulates, she gestures pleadingly at conductor Ollu, as if seeking understanding.”
“blazing performance”
“ArtsEmerson continues to push the boundaries of what to expect out of them”
“An experience unlike anything else currently on stage.”
“Ms. Wysocka performance is a virtuosic as any pianist today. Those who love Chopin, piano, or even classical music should not miss this production.”
"As [Wysocka] captures and conveys the passion and despair of Chopin's life and his music, the text washes over one like a tsunami. It is a performance that had the ArtsEmerson audience at the Paramount Theater leaping to their feet in praise of what they had just seen”
“It is like nothing else I have seen before - which is something I often find myself thinking and saying when I drink at the rich fountain of ArtsEmerson's offerings.”
"One has to experience Barbara Wysocka’s phenomenal performance of this amalgamation of quotation, memoir, treatise, critique, fantasy to believe it."
"An amazing tour de force"
"Wild, weird and wonderful"
"An amazing tidal wave of verbiage, anecdote, analysis and reaction"
"CHOPIN WITHOUT PIANO is a guerrilla piece,” declares Zadara, the most distinguished Polish director-playwright of his generation. “It bears the marks of violation or sacrilege. It aims to reinvent the possibility of a dialogue about the event of a concert, about music, Poland, and about culture in the broadest sense.”
"Michał Zadara and Barbara Wysocka are among the pre-eminent Polish theater artists of their generation"
"presents new possibilities for theater and music to intersect in performance, and reveals how classical composers and music remain alive and relevant for us today.”
"Who would dare separate the 19th-century Polish composer from the instrument most associated with him, and why write a one-woman play that does just that?" - Merilyn Jackson
"We wanted to come back to an original Chopin, a Chopin who was a radical artist of his time, wild, incomprehensible, transcending the boundaries of what people thought was possible in music." - Michał Zadara
#ChopinWithoutPiano
#ChopinWithoutPiano
