Tickets in online
presale on Vivaticket

project leader: Jaroslaw Fret
with: Ditte Berkeley, Kamila Klamut, Nini Julia Bang,
Przemyslaw  Blaszczak, Tomasz Bojarski, Alessandro Curti,
Jean François Favreau, Aleksandra Kotecka, Jaroslaw Fret,
Matej Matejka, Ewa Pasikowska, Tomasz Wierzbowski
lighting: Bartosz Radziszewski

Gospels of Childhood tells the 'late story of the flesh' - after love, after humiliation, after death - an impossible story of resurrection.
Teatr Zar's interest in gnostic elements from the beginning of Christianity provided the initial impulse for the Gospels of Childhood project. The performance itself oscillates between two threads: the story of Lazarus' resuscitation evoked through the mouths of his sisters Marta and Maria, and "the testimony of Mary Magdalene", who, according to some gnostic sources, held an important position among the apostles and was in fact Lazarus' sister. Among the texts included in the performance are scarcely known apocryphal gospels such as that of Mary Magdalene, Philip and Thomas and fragments by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Simone Weil.
Zar collected the songs used in the performance during its expeditions to Georgia, Bulgaria and Grrece between 1999 and 2003. Of particular significance was its work with the Svaneti people who live in the highest part of the Caucasus Mountains. As part of a centuries-old tradition, these tribal people have kept alive their funeral songs, which are identified as the oldest form of polyphony in Georgia and most likely the world. The project's second musical plot comprises liturgical songs from the Eastern Orthodox monastic republic of Athos. These songs, connected to the Pascha (Easter) period, build the end part of the performance  - the consolamentum. 

Anhelli. The Calling is a tribute to the Polish Romantic poet Juliusz Slowacki and his journey from Naples to the Holy Land, via Alexandria, Cairo and Damasco, during which he wrote the poem Anhelli. The performance's musical core is based on Byzantine and Sardinian hymns as well as Orthodox Irmoi.
Anhelli's theme is one that resonates with the essence of theatre and its place in this world. It is a theme of unity and disintegration of life, of corporality, of our own selves. It is a theme of possession. Of making a vessel for the other, for a stranger's life, even a future life, out of our own selves.  This is a theme of being possessed by an angel.
How can we provide an angel with transit through a human body; how can we let that angel live there for a moment? In what musical form? In what vibration?
Anhelli calls for small country wooden churches where we can remain enclosed in aloneness. Closed within. Instead of cathedrals - small temples of the heart; small churches of the body; chapels and meetings halls. Where we can call the spirit of forefathers; call the Angels.

Photo 1: Matej Matejka, Kamila Klamut-Pawlik, Anhelli. The Calling,
performance by Teatr ZAR, photo by Ken Reynolds
Photo 2: Anhelli. The Calling,
performance by Teatr ZAR, photo by Ken Reynolds