Fahrenheit 451, The Coastal Theatre in Gdansk

Anti-utopian story about future, where individualism is completely stifled, knowledge is unnecessary and illiteracy is desirable. Books are evil, their possession is punishable, firefighters burn them at the stakes. The play is directed by Marcin Liber, the most renowned author of contemporary theatre, recipient of Konrad’s Laurel Grand Prix, as well as various awards and distinctions.

“We are mostly interested in in-depth diagnosis of present times, in deepening dialogue on subjects that have already been analysed by journalists and in constructing worlds that are so different from the world we live in.

Working on this play, based on Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury, gives us such an opportunity. One can say that the vision of the future in the world presented in the book is different to the world, where digitisation and the Internet prevent us from “burning books at the stakes”; yet, we would like to remain faithful to the author of the book and to treat symbolically (as well as to extend) the meaning of the annihilation of cultural content that is so characteristic of the world of Guy Montag. As Faber says when meeting Montag: “It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the parlour families' today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radio and television, but are not.” It means that for Bradbury books and lectures represent the quantity of the content that was replaced by shorter versions that blackmail us emotionally. While observing the modern world, even briefly, it is hard to resist the impression that the diagnosis of 50 years back is extremely accurate.

The TV series are dominated by amateurs. The dialogues, focused on strong emotions, without any reflection, are improvised. Algorithms created to read articles shorten the content to their very essence. Such examples can be multiplied indefinitely.

We would like, though, to resist the ease of simple criticism of technological development and to show the solitude of a human being in the world that is dominated by modern media displacing old lifestyle and old ways of being close to cultural content. The experience of our ancestors reminds us that the issue of technological changes has always been present, and the criticism of the progress existed even when books were invented. The same goes with Phaedrus (dialogue) by Plato who thinks writing would become the tool which would deprive people of memory. He was obviously wrong.