Istropolitana Project: FAME MMA (PL)

Theatre – Drama Theatre

Director: Kamil Białaszek
Set and Costume Design: Julia Zawadzka
Video: Michał Mitoraj
Camera operators: Michał Mitoraj, Hubert Kozarzewski, Kacper Rzęchowski, Filip Naumienko

Cast: Dominik Rubaj, Adam Szustak, Magdalena Prosuł, Julia Piklikiewicz, Hubert Woliński, Oliver Woodcock, Katarzyna Łubik

The project touches upon the subject of freak fights – an MMA formula widespread in Poland, Russia and the United States, based on confrontations between people not connected with the martial arts community and celebrities.

The title takes its name from the largest Polish freakfight federation.
The purpose of the show is to highlight the problem of abuse and pathologies associated with this type of spectacle – recordings from various conferences and interviews with “fighters” were used as literary material for the script. In our performance, the meeting between Achilles and Hector from Shakespeare’s “Troilus and Cressida” serves as a framework for analyzing the situation of the competitors’ pre-fight, so-called “face to face” conversation. This peculiar moment of exchange is the highlight of any freakfight conference, sometimes more important than the fight itself. The fighters are paired up on the basis of their personal blunders, and it is then that the most spicy details of their private lives come to light. In our interpretation, events of this type serve as the equivalent of gladiatorial combat – they provide a space to satisfy the most primitive needs and reflexes of the general public. They prove that, as a civilization, we still have not gotten rid of the primal need to experience physical cruelty and to participate in public humiliation.

The main motive guiding our work on the performance is the idea of confrontation as an impossibility of agreement between subjects who do not allow each other to come to their senses.
The solution we propose is tenderness and the ability to admit our own imperfection.

WARNING: Explicit language.

Length: 60 minutes.

This performance is part of the Istropolitana Project festival.