Page to Stage

Poetry Performance

No Time to Rehearse, Every Night is Opening Night:
Verses of Wislawa Szymborska
Design and Direction by Dr. Omkar Bhatkar

NCPA Library in collaboration with Metamorphosis Theatre and Films

Nobel Prize winner Wisława Szymborska draws us in with her unexpected, unassuming humour. “If you want the world in a nutshell,” a Polish critic remarked, “try Szymborska.” In Szymborska’s view of the world, writes Richard Lourie in The New York Times, “astonishment is not some precious poetic stance, but the only sane and natural response to the onrush of life that is forever various and new. It leaves no time to rehearse; every night is opening night.” Edited by the award-winning translator, Clare Cavanagh, Map: Collected and Last Poems traces Szymborska’s work until she died in 2012. According to translators Magnus Krynski and Robert Maguire, “Szymborka’s poetry is marked by high seriousness, delightful inventiveness, a prodigal imagination, and enormous technical skill … She looks on with wonder, astonishment and amusement, but almost never with despair.” From ‘The trampling of eternity with the tip of a golden slipper’ to ‘A Sorrowful Buddha, a sorrowful Jesus’ to many a lexicon of ironic chutzpah, these poems take the audience on a rather wondrous journey.

Director: Omkar Bhatkar
Cast: Radhika Mhatre, Salome Raye , Preeti N. Singha
Music: Nikhil Verghese

Box Office now open.