director: Michał Walczak
stage design:
Małgorzata Tarasewicz-Wosik
music:
Jerzy Bielski
multimedia:
Krzysztof Kiziewicz
cast:
Paweł Chomczyk, Błażej Piotrowski, Dagmara Sowa 

Cut off from live theater due to the coronavirus pandemic, the marriage of Joanna and Piotr goes through a severe crisis, confronting their own demons, settling accounts with the past and going wild. An apartment deprived of a housekeeper from the East turns into a jungle of emotions that cannot be expressed in yoga, fitness or watching online performances. Only when a courier comes to the apartment with a mysterious parcel and turns out to be an actor Krystian, who has lost faith in his profession, there is a chance for rescue – through the theater. A home private theater with a 24/7 full-time actor is an innovation that, on the one hand, provides artists with support during a pandemic, and on the other – channels toxic marital emotions into creating art together. A perverse and erotic game begins between Piotr, Joanna and Krystian, in which papier-mâché masks, puppets and homemade costumes begin to live their own lives, revealing deeply hidden secrets and desires. The plague that came from the East turns out to be a cleansing ritual for the marriage of Joanna and Piotr, and for the entire West, patronized by the mysterious patron of 2020 – the metal rat.

The premiere of Michał Walczak’s pandemic thriller is another production, after the cult “Bloodbath”, produced by the Coincidentia group, which asks the question about the meaning of theater in an increasingly alienated – not only due to the pandemic – reality and explores the possibilities of combining new technologies with theater form. Inspired by the Far East cinema and theater, “The Year of the Metal Rat” is an attempt to find a new cinema-theatrical language that will save the ability to dream and tell stories in the conditions of the coronavirus pandemic, but also – the plague of toxic information, fears and manipulations that take away the faith in sharing emotions.