Directed by Samantha Shay, the final version of the dance theatre piece Life in this House is Over, a collaboration of Source Material, Teatr ZAR actors, the Pina Bausch Zentrum (Wuppertal) and the Grotowski Institute (Wrocław), will premiere on 4 and 5 November at the Grotowski Institute in Wrocław.

Set around a funeral and funeral reception, Life in this House is Over brings to the fore the awkwardness of the occasion, the stilted interactions and strained conversations of people thrown together in a somewhat odd time and place, doing their best to stick to the social etiquette. The mourners form a live community whose members are caught between their incomplete memory of the past and an unpredictable future. Tensions mount, intergenerational fissures grow. The stories recounted, both individual and shared, come under scrutiny: which, if any, can be saved and preserved?

Hovering above the events, as it were, is a multilayered reflection on time and how an intergenerational and multicultural creative community is making its mark on it. The performance also revisits the Chekhov-inspired question of how one can live with the prospect of uncertain future eclipsed by memories of a still resonant past: how to inhabit a world constantly battered by the force of inevitable change?

In exploring this territory, the creators of Life in this House is Over enlist the tools of theatre, dance and improvisation. Samantha Shay has brought together artists from two leading arts hubs, including dancers working with Pina Bausch’s legendary Tanztheater Wuppertal and Teatr ZAR actors, whose work is deeply rooted in the ‘theatre of sound’. The teaming up of artists working in two different fields: dance and movement, on the one hand, and voice and song, on the other, has produced a kaleidoscopic blend of influences with no fixed point of view, leaving the audience free to choose from the many strands, layers and forms of the story and to draw their own conclusions.

An early version of the piece, I Should Have a Party for All the Thoughts I Didn’t Say: Processes, was staged at the Na Grobli Studio in November 2023 as part of Dance/Tradition/Transgression.

The first of the two premiere performances will be followed by an open discussion, Action/Dance/Voice, featuring Bettina Milz, head of the Pina Bausch Zentrum, and Jarosław Fret, director of the Grotowski Institute.

Meeting and performance “Life in this House is Over” are carried out as part of the Teatr ZAR are co-financed by the Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund under the programme Dance, implemented by the National Institute of Music.