Inner Monologue
direction Wojtek Ziemilski
Duration: 55 minutes
Tickets: 40 zł / 50 zł
Trigger warnings: Throughout the performance, the audience listens to the monologue through headphones.
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Inner Monologue 15.05.2026, 19:00
“I talk to my intestines. I press a microphone to my stomach and listen to what my microbiota ‘says to me.’ I try to understand how we can get along. And yet, I don’t necessarily believe that someone is answering me. I waver between anthropomorphizing bacteria and fearing that this is completely pointless. Although, when I speak to what’s in my intestines, I’m not addressing an abstraction – not a god, a soul, or a feeling. I’m talking to a very specific group of living beings, each of which has its own character, preferences, and needs, each significantly influencing my functioning. It’s worth negotiating with them. The only problem is that there are no known human ways to communicate effectively.”
The starting point for Wojtek Ziemilski’s latest performance was the illness he has been struggling with for eight years. Persistent, difficult-to-control, incurable. Successive treatments brought no improvement, doctors shrugged their shoulders, and alternative methods failed. Finally, a glimmer of hope appeared: a global pharmaceutical company released a new drug. Not exactly safe – but promising.
But a tear-jerking tale of illness would be too simple. Instead, Ziemilski examines the absurdity of his condition, tests the limits of his imagination, and laughs at romanticizing it. It’s unclear when the process the audience experiences is a serious confrontation with his frailty and when it becomes a parody.
Team
Text and performance: Wojtek Ziemilski
Research, dramaturgical collaboration: Jowita Mazurkiewicz
Research, devising: Sean Palmer
Sound: Jacek Mazurkiewicz
Production: Olga Kozińska
Curator: Tomasz Plata
Scientific advice: prof. dr hab. n. med. Piotr Albrecht, dr Nicolas Gold
Acknowledgements: Sodja Lotker, Lea Kukovičič, Janek Turkowski, Dorota Głażewska-Ziemilska, Paweł Ziemilski, Marcin Kosakowski, Michał Libera, Asa Horvitz, the doctors of the National Medical Institute of the Ministry of the Interior and Administration
About the artist
Wojtek Ziemilski is a theatre director and visual artist. His performances have been shown in over 20 countries, at events such as the Ruhrtriennale, the Prague Quadriennial, the Divine Comedy Festival, and won awards such as the Main Prize of the Zürcher Theater Spektakel or the Main Prize of the Fast Forward Festival in Dresden.
Ziemilski extends the idea of documentary performance. His work is often an inquiry into spectatorship and the possibility for action. By using tools such as devising, real-time composition, but also references from the world of visual arts and various media, he builds universes that combine aesthetic experience with intellectual inquiry.
He teaches contemporary approaches to performance with a particular focus on devising techniques, connections between contemporary dance and theatre, and the use of media in performance. He is a lecturer at the National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw and at the Warsaw University, and has been giving lectures and workshops across the world, e.g. at the Prague DAMU, UNIRIO in Rio de Janeiro, or the Krakow National Theatre School. He is currently preparing for a PhD at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
Partners
The performance was subsidized by the Warsaw City Hall as part of the project Komuna Warszawa – Social Institution of Culture.
“Inner Monologue” was the first of the premieres of Komuna Warszawa’s new performative series, Reason NOW, co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.