Nov 11—14, 2015
Chopin Without Piano
CENTRALA / USA
Artfully weaving together excerpts from Frédéric Chopin’s letters and music, Chopin Without Piano invites audiences to explore a radically different side of the famous Polish composer and the cultural, political and philosophical tensions of his time. Helmed by one of Poland’s most significant directors and accompanied by a full symphonic orchestra of Boston Conservatory musicians, Chopin Without Piano is a rare opportunity to think more deeply about the tradition of live classical performance, culture in the broadest sense, and the sustaining value of Chopin’s music. By removing Chopin’s piano parts from his most famous concertos and replacing it with a human shouting his story, audiences are left stunned and illuminated as a new form of theatre is born.
Info
Venue
Emerson Paramount Center
Mainstage
559 Washington Street, Boston, MA 02111
Dates
Nov 11, 2015 - Nov 14, 2015
Details
90 minutes, no intermission
All Ages
Performed in Polish with English surtitles.
“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”
— The Boston Globe
“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.”
— Edge Media Network
“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.”
— White Rhino Report
“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”
— Boston Arts Diary
“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.”
— Phindie
“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.”
— Mainline 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
— The Philadelphia Inquirer
“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
— Fringe Arts