SHEOL / שאול

Theatre study on Death and Love by Monika Wachowicz and Jarosław Fret

Concept: Monika Wachowicz and Jarosław Fret
Stage movement, costume designer and performer: Monika Wachowicz
Writer: Monika Wachowicz and Jarosław Fret
Music: Marcin ‘Cozer’ Markiewicz

Musical arrangements Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time: Jan Skopowski, Kamil Grabowski
Scenography: Jarosław Fret
Stage design: technical department of the Grotowski Institute directed by Piotr Jacyk
Production: the Grotowski Institute, Katowice Miasto Ogrodów (TEATROGRANTY 2021,  miasto ogrodow.eu )

Premiered on 3 December 2021 at the Grotowski Institute, Wrocław, and on 8 December 2021 in the Silesian Theatre, Katowice Running time: 75 minutes

SHEOL / שאול is a theatrical seance and a modern lamentation for the living and the dead, the born and the unborn. It’s a descent on a thin line of breath, voice and sound to the very bottom of silence, which just like the mythical Sheol, covers and closes
itself, becoming a veil that no feeling or image can penetrate. The only power that can rescue those descending to Sheol is love. The descending is accompanied by music, or rather its extraordinary density – as if our bodies were ‘only’ a sound, or an instrument
and also a path into the deep, without a bottom.

Inspired by a fascination with Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3, also known as The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, and including excerpts from Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time
and Gregorgio Allegri’s Miserrere, Sheol is a story about the desire and will to live a life that is full and vibrant like breathing fire.