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Thomas Irmer, "The tank men, the dog and Jelinek's couch" - nachtcritic.de, April 6, 2011
Marta Górnicka's CHORUS OF WOMEN is a true discovery and probably a turning point for Polish theatre...
25 women of different ages and backgrounds speak in chorus, first about good recipes and good men, and then this wonderful choral voice takes on images of women in consumer society, forced acts aimed at achieving these ideals of beauty and doubting them. All this takes place between shouts and murmurs, between gathering in strong groups and lying down on the floor as a fragile individual. [...] The last word - metoikias - refers to Antigone and her treatment as an alien deprived of her rights in her own country. A truly strong and thrilling spectacle.
Katarzyna Czeczot, “The Chorus of Women Mixes for Antigone”, www.krytykapolityczna.pl, 2.07.2010
"Marta Górnicka, the librettist of The Chorus of Women, inserts into it one of the lines pronounced by the chorus from the tragedy by Sophocles: the male chorus, as Sophocles gave priority to such a chorus...
Similarly, she appropriates all other lines. Her libretto is conceived of as a bewildering collage; bewildering since the dynamics of consecutive phrases benefits from all possible registers, from a weak squeal to invasive orders, from coquettishness, in which at times incertitude and at times fear resound, to an angry roar. Regular chants equally coexist with moments of complete cacophony (…) Clashes of languages, as well as tension created by the repeated gestures of separation and unification, breaks and alliances, the fragility of this chorus, so remote from a compact group, whose force is unity – all these make an unusual, hypnotising and electrifying enterprise. Its message combines the energy of rejection with purifying therapy: a combination that I regarded as impossible until The Chorus of Women. The enunciated text splits into quartets, duets and single voices. One of the lines interrupts another or several resound at once; the chant turns into noise, but when it returns into pure tone there is a tension in it, behind which you can feel the determination of all the singers. This is a chorus on the verge of collapse, performing, as if convinced of its mission, an anthem of integration.”
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Uwaga, expats: the performances of Chór Kobiet have proved to be accessible for any audience, even if you don’t speak Polish...
Warsaw’s homegrown Greek theatrical chorus has found a wide reception outside of Poland, touring countries from Japan to France to Ukraine this fall. The group’s second project, Magnificat, has just been awarded Best Alternative Theatre and Best Theatrical Music for the 2010-2011 season by Teatr magazine. The chorus returns to Warsaw this November and December to perform at their home base, the Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute.
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