Can you help me?

8 May ’25 – premiere Malmö Theatre Academy (SE)

13 June ’25 – premiere Scena Robocza, Poznań (PL)

After all, we deserve it, don’t we? We’ve earned it with our hard work. The fatigue from waking up to going to sleep. Our dreams were not exorbitant, just to always have something to put in the pot, to have enough money to regularly change the bedding in which we sleep with someone close to us, to get a job that allows us to fulfil our potential. To be a little proud, but not vain. To be able to stick one’s chest out and take a calm breath in which fear for tomorrow does not lurk. Good job! Well done! I am proud of you!

Can we recall our first successes and failures? Our first steps, tying our own shoes, a rhyme memorised in kindergarten? What is left of them in us? In the performance Can you help me, Filip Pawlak will ask about the qualifying skills necessary for a happy life and what we think about when we sigh deeply when tired after a day’s work. 

Within the framework of his work, he tries to distance himself from his own biography, while at the same time attempting to notice, from a distance, the symbolic moments that have conditioned his perception of disability, hisy east European working-class background, his non-heteronormative identity, but also the hope that he hold in art. 

• Concept, script, performance: Filip Pawlak
• Supporting actor: Malte Munkesjö (SE) / Michał Tokarski (PL)
• Music: Avtomat
• Costume: Eva Hedblom
• Artistic advice: Wojtek Ziemilski, Erik Pold, Edit Kaldor
• Production: Malmö Theatre Academy / Lund University; Filip Pawlak
• Production support: Theatre21 / Center for Inclusive Art (PL)
  

Duration: around 60 minutes
Polish premiere: 13 June 2025 – Scena Robocza, Poznan

Research is conducted thanks to funding from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage under the “Młoda Polska/Young Poland” scholarship programme 2024. Developed during artistic residences in: Hellerau – European Center for Arts (DE) Komuna/Warszawa (PL) Skånes Dansteater (SE).

Used fragment of video recording: Maurice Ravel: Piano concerto for the left hand performed by Orchestra of the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar (Conductor: Prof. Nicolás Pasquet; Hélène Tysman, piano) courtesy of University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar
Film used under citation rights: Chce się żyć. (2013). Director: Pieprzyca, Maciej. Prod: Studio Filmowe Tramway; distribution: Kino Świat