The sign of Jonah

DESCRIPTION OF THE PERFORMANCE:

Why do we need this dark empathy? To search for a man, who found himself on the other side of death- and came back. Jonah is a type of Christ... „For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Mt 12, 39-40). And „Quem quaeritis?” (Whom do you seek?) is the first matter raised in the history of modern European theatre. The oldest surviving liturgical drama begins with this question (from the first half of the XIII Century). Fragments of the Book of Jonah, summarized by the director Pawel Passini and juxtaposed with the text of the medieval drama „Visitatio Sepulchri” (Visitation of the Holy Grave), create a performance in which images are evoked by narration and sound.

The form of „Visitatio Sepulchri” is related to the structure of a Greek tragedy, and its content is based on The Gospels. In several scenes it shows events which are recalled in the Easter Resurrection Liturgy: the women's peregrination to the Holy Grave with the holy oils, their conversation with the Angel, the race of the two apostles, John and Peter, to the grave and the demonstration of the empty shrouds. However, before the secret of the Resurrection could be revealed on Easter morning, three clerics dressed in women’ robes had to - as the three women from the Gospel – traverse the path, that is a meditation on death, with the faithful, accompanied by Psalms and songs devoted to the Passion of the Christ (including the Stabat Mater).

INFORMATION ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

The neTTheatre company started its activity in Srebrna Gora, 60 km away from Wroclaw, inside an evangelical church, which after the war was used as the locally well-known tavern 'Under The Little Angel'. As a result of cooperation with the University of Technology from Wroclaw, ITTv Group from Lublin, and CHOREA Theatre and Art Factory in Łódź, the first European online theatre appeared. An Internet broadcast of the premiere show titled 'Odpoczywanie', collected over 16,000 users from all over the world. Interactive online theatre broadcasts were taken under the honourable patronage of Viviane Reading, the Member of the European Commission responsible for Information Society and Media. Since 2009, neTTheatre company has been working in the Centre for Culture in Lublin. After this transfer to Lublin, the director of neTtheatre, Paweł Passini, and his co-workers established the Artists Association Near East, which is a non-governmental organization for the gathering of and support for artists from Lublin and other parts of Poland who develop Middle Eastern ideals. Nowadays, the neTTheatre team is focused on three topics: 1. Internet and New Media, 2. Ancient theatre, 3. Artistic cultural and media education.