Over the past several years, Poland’s theater scene has undergone a much-needed and explosive renaissance, led in large part by the imaginative and transgressive director Grzegorz Jarzyna. While Jarzyna has distinguished himself even from his peers with a singular style and recognition —including his becoming, in 1998 at the age of 30, the youngest artistic director in the history of Polish theater—his work is emblematic of the new spirit his generation is bringing to the medium—a spirit of youthful anti-conformism and experimentalism. TR Warszawa, traditionally known as Teatr Rozmaitosci, the preeminent Polish theater company led by Jarzyna, produced Canadian playwright George F. Walker’s provocative Risk Everything as part of a year-long project called Teren Warszawa (Area Warsaw). Jarzyna invited young actors to perform with TR’s distinguished acting company, bringing a newly energized Polish theater to the streets—to gambling houses, train stations, and underground clubs—in various parts of Warsaw and other Polish cities, including a vast, former slaughterhouse in Poznan. Now, Jarzyna and TR extend their vision beyond their country’s borders with this performance at St. Ann’s Warehouse of Walker’s one-act play about a gambling addict (played by actress Aleksandra Konieczna) who steals a local gangster’s money and is willing to risk everything for the better life she thinks the money will bring her.

In terms of material, Jarzyna’s passion is to create a theater that resonates with the young new audiences once again coming to the theaters in Poland. He describes the time of his adolescence in the early 1980s as “perhaps the last great moment for Polish theater.” By the end of that decade, “the theater was slowly, slowly dying, because of the changes in Poland...Theater was more and more narrowly concentrated on politics—it was only about politics…And then suddenly the government changed, but the theaters were still stuck with the old political repertory...So they gave these theaters over to young directors, and it gave everyone a lot of hope. And now this new theater is on the rise.”