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Monika Wachowicz
Studio Ciała i Emocji |
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| email: | |
| facebook: | @studiowachowicz |
| telefon: | +48 515 921 993 |
| adres: | Katowice, Poland |
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While bringing CRUMBS, I would like to speak the language of our bodies and emotions, on surface of which we will see: fleeting moments, puffs of love dust, endless self-immolation, surprise, evolution, suffering, relationships, ‘mild agony’, or maybe rather most importantly, Fight, which I want to talk about as loudly as possible.
Why?
LIFE / FIGHT – WOMAN / HER
That’s HER. She remains locked behind the wire of prison walls, or houses where doors and windows remain shut, where the alive ones become dead, even though they haven’t died yet. She went out on the streets in the Fall, holding banners saying ‘Freedom’ and you cannot stop her, turn her back.
It’s HER who screamed and still is screaming through the mouths of women, men and children, when I was unable to open my mouth and when I was walking with my trembling, sometimes even paralyzed body, yet ready to fight along with other people walking next to me.
I have always wanted to face the idea of unmediated, direct action that is caused by something penetrated ‘intravenously’, like an injection or a sting.
In my stage work, I have always thought and taken action as HER.
Now SHE, a daughter, a sister, a lover, a mother, is a body, a temple. She is invincible, one of a kind and she is ‘for’ until the end of the world.
The first CRUMBS performance was combined with Artur Turek’s photo exhibition from the ‘V’ show and it was, in a sense, connected to it. While it was not a direct mapping of the performance, it was also more than just a photo report. It has become a new interpretation of that performance, once again exploring the subjects of loneliness, looking for meaning, strength of life as a fight. The solo project ‘V’ and ‘Crumbs’ came into being as diptychs and that’s how I tend to think about them. The second project would have never happened without the first one, even though I am keeping a black canvas for my future actions.
Since the premiere, CRUMBS has been in a constant process of changing. After the rehearsal period in the A Part theatre, its final shape has come to life during off.[REC.] in a facility in Brzezinka and Na Grobli Studio in Wroclaw, named after Jerzy Grotowski, which I’m eternally thankful for.
Monika Wachowicz
Idea, realization and installment: Monika Wachowicz
Cooperation: Jarosław Fret
Music: Frédéric Chopin, Ballade g-moll op. 23, an excerpt from a song by Murcof, arranged by Mirosław Matyasik, and white hum – sounds from inside the uterus.
Text editing: Marcin ‘Cozer’ Markiewicz
Duration: About 45 minutes
+18 years old
Installation is suitable for people having visual or hearing impairment.
Photo exhibition: Artur Turek, based on solo project ‘V’ directed by Monika Wachowicz
Exhibition curator: Kamil Myszkowski
The project was implemented within the cultural scholarship granted by Marshal of the Silesian Voivodeship.
Video recording: November 21 2020
Premiere: March 12 2020, Korez Theatre gallery in Katowice
Previous presentations of the performance:
“Crumbs” – The Biography of a Woman Written in Shards, Soil, and Silence Foaie.R June 15, 2025. Ramona Abrudan
Under the sign of “space”, the theme chosen with an almost sacred lucidity for this year’s edition of the BABEL International Festival, the stage of the Main Hall of the “Tony Bulandra” Theatre becomes something else. It is no longer just a backdrop for theatrical expression but a living territory, charged with memory, suffering, and revelation. A transfigured space, pulsating with questions about identity, belonging, and survival, where past and present clash with the force of a ritual.
In this intense context, the Grotowski Institute—a beacon of profound theatrical research, where the body becomes a scenic prayer—brings to the festival stage “Crumbs”, a hybrid creation between performance and installation, between ritual and confession. An artistic act that rejects the comfort of representation and radically descends into the vulnerable intimacy of being.
Polish actress Monika Wachowicz, deeply rooted in the tradition of experimental theatre and pure physical expression, transforms in “Crumbs” the entire artistic legacy of the Grotowski Institute into a visceral language. Female identity, trauma, memory—all are stripped to the bone and reconfigured into a ritual of rebirth, in which the body becomes a living archive of a torn biography.
The performance begins with an archetypal image: the fetus, the heartbeat of the unborn—a symbolic birth that initiates a deep descent into the essence of being. Chopin’s music, rather than soothing, amplifies inner tension; it becomes the sonic counterpoint to pain and resistance.
On stage, the objects are more than props: they are emotional and symbolic markers. Three buckets of water, a chocolate bar, life-and-death documents, plastic bags, and—most notably—two boxes filled with blue glass shards. These shards trace a path that cannot be crossed without injury. Barefoot, the artist inscribes her steps into flesh, every movement a silent declaration of embracing pain.
In a moment of radical honesty, Wachowicz undresses completely. The gesture holds none of the conventional aesthetics of stage nudity—it is an act of total vulnerability. Covering her body with water and soil, the artist signals rebirth, a reconnection to the root of feminine identity. The changed dress becomes a symbol of transformation, of a new beginning. The body—unadorned, untamed—is both witness and message, temple and untold story.
The ending does not release the audience with applause. Instead, it brings a profound silence, heavy with suspended emotion. On the screen behind her, photographs roll—faces, moments, fragments of life. A visual archive of absence, of pain, but also of hope.
The audience remains still, caught between restlessness and empathy, before a confession that goes beyond words. “Crumbs” does not offer answers; it opens wounds—gently, but without compromise. It is a plea for reconnection with what we have lost or forgotten, an invitation to reconstruct the whole from fragments—fragile, painful, but deeply human.
At BABEL 2025, “Crumbs” is not merely a theatrical event. It is a threshold experience, a descent into depths, a testimony of what it means to be a woman, to be body, to be an unfinished story. A contemporary ritual about what hurts us and what might still keep us alive.
Link: babelfest.ro
Background photo: Artur Turek