Wolak, Paweł

On Christmas Eve, Bogdan returns to the village. From prison. He's coming back and he's disturbing the festive mood. Fear has once again entered the hearts of the villagers. The only person who is not afraid of the newcomer is Jasiek. He's got his faults, and he's impulsive and ready to fight. Strict and brutal for his own family, however, he has some sense of justice in him. And a weakness for his sister, Sabinka. He resists, but finally accepts her relationship with Paul, Jehovah's son. But evil is hard to stop. Bogdan sets fire to Jehovah's possessions, and the barn, grain, and cows go up in smoke. Everyone knows he did it, but they remain silent. They fear for their lives and their loved ones. Acceptance of evil triggers greater evil. Bogdan murders Jehovah and Paul. Jasiek finds the murderer's bloody clothes by the river and sets off to meet him. He is overpowered by Bogdan and his wife, Marysia, who, like a hypnotized woman, has passed to his side. They want to hang Jasiek. In the barn. Quickly, don't let him suffer, because he was good to them... Meanwhile, Jasiek's mother brings the whole village to the rescue. With pitchforks, stanchions, shovels. They've already found Jehovah and Paul's corpses. Bogdan tries to save himself by jumping into the river, but the peasants do not let him go ashore. He's sinking. The village doesn't go to communion for a year, because the priest wouldn't give the, absolution anyway. And then a big flood washes half the village away. Is that God's punishment? Have the trespasses been redeemed? Evil driven away? Or is it just lurking and waiting...

•  „A ballad balancing on the verge of improbability about people who wake up to evil - and who become its victims. A dark, emotionally dense story that takes place in a village where everyone has two faces. The past is intertwined with new conflicts: love clashes with hatred, forgiveness with crime, fear with euphoria. No one will get out of here unscathed.” (source: Teatr Modrzejewskiej in Legnica)
• „…Under the guise of a folk ballad, we are presented with a dark thriller, close to the poetics of Wojciech Smarzowski's films. And although the whole thing starts with a Christmas Eve supper, we will not find here a refreshing image of community - it is replaced by hypocrisy and emptiness hidden in ritual gestures. Here, the devil, who has stopped in the village for a while, is actually unnecessary. Because people are cooking up a hell on earth for themselves." (source: Gazeta Wyborcza)

"If you knew everything, there wouldn't be so much evil in the world. Unless God and Demon are the same." This is a continuation of the dialogue with God that the PiK's heroes have. Paweł comes to see his brother, Jasiek, together with his wife and son. He is in his family home for the first time in twenty years. And only because their father is dying. As children they used to love each other very much. But Jasiek cannot forgive his brother for running away from home, leaving him and his mother at the mercy of his father, an abusive alcoholic. The atmosphere between the brothers is very tense. It culminates in a fight. Meanwhile, Bożena, Paweł's wife, communicates clearly - after the father's death, she expects the inheritance to be split in half. Of course, she does not want anything for herself. She thinks only about her son and his future. Jasiek invites God to his kitchen for a chat, he even prepares a stool, but does God ever come? Or maybe Jasiek can't properly hear his voice? Even though he wants to... God doesn't even help him with personal matters that end in a complete disaster. After a while, the brother comes to him alone, without his wife. Then it turns out that Janek's hopes for a great treasure buried by the Germans are no more than fantasies. No treasure existed. There is a sincere conversation between the brothers, but the old intimacy was irrevocably destroyed. Because closeness is something that is not given to people once and for all. It is something to be nurtured. To be respected. And the price for neglect is loneliness. How often we forget that...

The Trilogy of Rural Tales is not only a record of our times, it is a universal morality play about everymen in the conflict between nature and the god who left humanity on its own.

A village is not an ordinary group. It's an organism, a voice, a breath...but not so ordinary...

"I don't like the water here, the flowers don't smell, I keep tripping. No money to run away... and with no money, there is no place to run to either. I'm getting cold, and I'd rather be hot." - That's what Baśka says to the priest clarifies at confession. This is not her place and not her life. Jasiek's madly in love with her, but without reciprocity. Because what can he offer? A dance at the clubhouse and a pint of beer? But even Jasiek has his dignity. When Baśka betrays him with a guy from the city, he throws her out. Now she has nothing left to lose. She packs a suitcase, leaves her child and runs away to her dream city. But she's not playing nice there. She seduces her best friend's boyfriend as soon as she has a chance.  Meanwhile, Lady luck has smiled at Jasiek - he won the lottery. And suddenly the whole village is at his doorstep... If he is rich, he should share... Baśka also found out, came back and suddenly fell in love. All night long and all day long she was standing in front of his cottage, and nothing. Finally Mietek came for his sister. "Because the whore only causes embarassment". He took her home, released the dog from the chain, tied up the sister, and put her in the doghouse. But Jasiek found out, he came for Baśka, pulled the chain out of the kennel and led her home. But she kept saying that she would hang herself if he didn't want her. She wants to hang herself - well. They go to the barn, she washes herself with water from a bucket before she dies, all wet... and since it's hard to free oneself from infatuation, Jasiek succumbs to her charms and they lay down on the hay together, for a short trip to heaven. But the hay catches on fire, quite mysteriously. Jasiek can't unhook Baśka, still tied to a chain. He runs to get help, but nobody's there. They hide in the dark, cowards... Even Baśka's brother, Mietek. Jasiek wants to come back, but it's too late. The barn has burned down. Together with Baśka. And since people saw him leading her on the chain, the police took him away. And that's all he got from love.

And so Jasiek says to God:

In this play we travel to the world known from Dworak and Wolak's previous plays. It is a bloody tale stylized as a folk ballad about two families taking turns to send their male descendants to serve the Church. When there is a shortage of men and only daughters are born in the town, the order is disrupted. It is supposed to be restored by giving up Anthony's youngest daughter, Joanna, to the monastery. The girl has been raised to be a saint since childhood, but she rebels against taking on this burden. And so it's only a step away from the catastrophe that can only be averted by a bloody ritual...

Loyal pack represents all the best in PiK's writing. The palpability and vividness of the characters, the aura of a cruel fairy tale, the anxiety-laden poetry of the piece. It is worth to get to know it in reading, however, one should remember that Dworak and Wolak's real element is theatre. They write their plays in order to test them on stage, so that they become part of the performance's space.

- from Jacek Wakar's introduction to the anthology Poland is a myth. New dramas

A dark tale set in a small town. In two rival families, only daughters are born, although all are waiting for the birth of the future priest. Finally, the youngest daughter is destined for the monastery as a sacrifice. Raised as a saintly, the girl begins to rebel, as does her father, while the mother turns into a wolf in defence of the community. The community demands a bloody ritual... The play is written in a poetic language, stylised as a folk tale, but it presents universal mechanisms of exclusion.

- source: the monthly magazine "Dialogue" 1/2018, where the play was first published

Paweł Dworak and Katarzyna Wolak - authors of the text and staging of Loyal pack - place all the events inside the community, which so happens to be one big family. Brothers, sisters, their spouses and children support each other, betray each other in their own circle and choose scapegoats from among their circle. This mechanism is intriguing. The main victim is at the same time the religious sacrifice - Joanna is to go to the convent and become a revered nun, she has been raised in this conviction since her childhood.

- Kamila Łapicka, zteatru.pl

The performances of this duo, which today is a separate entity entirely in the Legnica theatre, are primarily an attempt at confronting an individual with a community from which there is no real escape. [...] Wolak and Dworak set their performances in villages or small towns. But a village or a town is a symbolic settlement area here, because, as already mentioned, it is primarily about exposing human relations, their complexity, level of dependence, and the influence of the community on the individual.

- Grzegorz Ćwiertniewicz, teatrdlawas.pl

• Loyal pack got into the semi-finals of the Gdynia Drama Award 2018.
• The play appeared in the anthology Poland is a myth. New Dramas, published in April 2019 by ADiT.