“There is a God in heaven…

I'll forget that He exists,

I'll live as if He did not.”

Juliusz Słowacki, Balladyna

The play tells the story of Balladyna – not the ruthless character invented by Juliusz Słowacki, but the version reinvented by Polish comic author Jeremi Przybora. In this adaptation, the classical text meets the absurd, its grand literary flourishes devolve into puppet gestures. Tragedy turns into farce, murder becomes grotesque. Once a year, Balladyna rises from her grave just in time for the Matura exams. Cursed with loneliness and tortured by memory, she haunts teachers and scares the daylights out of Polish majors.

The protagonist of this dramatic monologue talks about the obstacles she had to overcome to win the throne. Can her brutality make us laugh? Where do we draw the line between power and insanity?

Balladyna 68 – A Slightly Abridged Version was created at the Białystok Branch of the Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art as part of the class “Techniques for working with actors on the puppet stage, based on Jeremi Przybora's Balladyna 68 with music by Jerzy Wasowski.”