'Lawrence of Arabia', which will be premiered on 22nd June 2018 at Teatr Powszechny during 'The Art and Society Festival Happy City 2018', is a theatrical telephone game, exploring our mediations and misunderstandings, and checking our 'received notions'. It is a farce about identity, put together by the cooperation of several groups: the creative team, foreigners living in Poland, as well as the actors working at Teatr Powszechny.
This show is an attempt of putting both participants and the public on someone else’s shoes, by looking at familiar issues from the outside, and a fantasy of theatre created for a multilingual and multicultural society. It’s also a play on viewers expectations - because what exactly do they know about Sudan? When was Poland a banana republic? Why does Zorro wear a burka? What is more remote to us: Venezuela or an Amazon warehouse?
The creators of 'Lawrence of Arabia' decided to invite newcomers, not rooted in Poland and those forced to leave their native countries, to cooperate. The goal of the show was to avoid constructing a phantom image of the Other. Expectations were contradicted, perceptions turned around in unexpected ways and the play gained its own comedic dimension. Comedy emerges as a serious, concrete remedy against generalizations and fantasies related to identity.