In this public reading, Gosia Wdowik will share material of her research for a performance to come.

"This project started in a country where women have limited access to sexual and reproductive health and where abortion is now illegal. Their rights are being taken away from them. The project started with the idea that women could come together and, without shame or fear, publicly manifest that they have had an abortion, and that this collective act would change/influence the law. It could be an activist success story. But: She was a friend of someone else is a story with too many beginnings and not enough endings – and an exhausted narrator."

60 minutes

in English

Content warning: references to abortion

GOSIA WDOWIK (1988) is a theatre maker and active member of GILDIA (Union of Polish Theater Makers). Her heart is based in Poland but her imagination is always somewhere else. During her Master Studies at Das Theater (2020-2022), she worked with the topic of burnout and explored the space between exhaustion and agency by implementing methods from activism into her artistic practice. Her main question was: How to create both theatre and change from a place of exhaustion? In her recent performance Shame (Nowy Theater in Warsaw) she explored social shame connected with working-class origins in her own family over three  generations of women. Past works include If you lived here with Tamara Antonijevic at Mousonturm in Frankfurt, Transit Monumental together with K.A.U. kollective (SpielArt Festival in Munich), Fiasko (Staadtheater in Darmstadt) and Return of Goddess (Sophiensaele in Berlin). With Girls (Theater Studio in Warsaw) and Football players (TR Warsaw) she tackles the topic of bodily emancipation.