The action of the play takes place in legendary times on the shores of Lake Gopło (below the city of Toruń) within the mythologized space of an enslaved country.  A war is being waged between two clans, the Lechites and the Veneds, which to a certain extent of convention can be considered a war between West and East, as embodied within German-Scandinavian and Slavic cultures respectively.  Słowacki used Lilla Weneda to convey his theories of Pan-Slavism and of a particular way of life for the Slavic people resting upon a poetic perception of the world – the tragedy’s main heroine, Lilla Weneda, became for the Polish people a symbol of the nation’s spirit, of sacrifice and of boundless love for one’s homeland.  At the cost of her life, Lilla Weneda frees from prison her father, the King of the Veneds, where he has been blinded and mutilated by the inhuman Lechites.

Director Nikolai Roshchin transposed the action of the play to the wasteland of humanity.  In the face of the apocalypse, the heroes are forced to admit to the pointlessness of human existence and to make way for the next form of life.  The performance reaches its finale over text from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra.

The premiere was held on 2/03/2005
Performance duration: 2 h. 30 min.

Staged by:
Direction and Scene Design — Nikolai Roshchin
Musical Arrangement — Dmitry Volkov and Ivan Volkov.

Performed by:
Natalia Voloshina, Ivan Volkov, Dmitry Volkov, Sergei Savitsky, Dmitry Arosiev, Yulia Shimolina, Alexandra Streltsina, Oleg Gerasimov, Alexander Komissarov, Park Eun Ju, Michael Wighton.