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Theatre lesson nr. 28 - comic book

During the last lesson we created a comic about our learning process through this year. My group observed that we became more confident mainly through the games we played and improvisation, we accentuated the teamwork skills and communication. I’m very sad that these were our last theatre lessons ever and i hope that in DP we will see ms. Paulina often😭😭😭😭.

I want to thank everybody for this year: the group and Ms. Paulina. In this group and through these lessons we grew, became more confident and bold.

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I really loved the theatre lessons in MYP5. They were one of my favorite parts of the week, and I’m honestly a bit sad that there won’t be any more theatre next year. The lessons felt like a nice break from everyday stress – where we could be creative, express ourselves, and have fun.

I also feel like I learned a lot, not just about acting, but about confidence and working with others. That was a big part of the lessons, and I really appreciate that we had to step out of our comfort zones so often. I feel like that really helped me become more confident.

Ms. Paulina, thank you for making the lessons fun, meaningful, and allowing us to growt through many activities, collaboration and conversations.

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Theatre lesson nr. 27 - Watchign the film Labirynth by Jim Henson

Reflection: What emotions or thoughts did the film evoke in you? Did you relate to Sarah's journey in any way?

While wathing Labirynth i felt many emotions like confusion, curiosity, and excitement. At all times the fantasy world of the Labirynth uncovered more and more strange creatures and magical places, making the plot interesting, as I did not expect what would be happening next. This also created a sense of nervousness because the reason for why Sarah is in the Labirynth in the first place, was to save her baby brother Toby. That was hard, as she was often getting tricked or lost in the path. The film also generated a bit of nostalgia related to my childhood. When I was younger, I loved Alice in Wonderland, had a themed birthday party, read books, visited a hotel, etc. When watching Labirynth i saw many similarities between these two stories. Both Alice and Labirynth tell a story about a young girl that finds herself in a magical world and has to find the way back while meeting strange creatures and animals. That connection evoked that nostalgia, as i miss childhood :).

As Sarah starts moving through the Labirynth she’s complaining, wating everything to be easier. She tells herself that she can’t give up and starts running, however the path she chose doesn’t seem to end. It looks like a never ending, straight path in between rock walls. That’s where she meets a little worm that’s tells her ‘nothing is as it seems in this place’, which changes her perspective. That’s how she found an opening in the wall and entered the Labirynth (however it turns out that if she would have been going the original way, she would have gone straight to the castle). Throughout her journey, she repeatedly that motive many times. Additionally, she learns the consequences of her choices, what she says, and that she is capable of facing challenging situations. She starts thinking about others too, becoming a more caring individual. I relate to her journey - how we wish to escape problems, however we grow and learn by facing them, becoming a better person. This is what IB has taught me - in the last two years i faced many stressful and uncomfortable situations but they made me stronger, less shy and more confident.

Symbolism: Identify at least two elements in the film (a character, place, or event) that might symbolize something deeper (e.g., growing up, temptation, choices). Explain briefly.

1. The Labirynth - represents the journey of life and more specifically, growing up with all the confusing paths, wrong directions and weird experiences. Each challenge forces Sarah to rethink her choices, choose what to do next and reflect on her journey so far, grow stronger. The Labirynth is a reflection of how teenagers try to figure out what they want to do in the future, what mistakes they shouldn’t repeat and what are their take aways, as well as decide about practically everything at such a young age.

2. The clock - represent time that passes quickly. It reminds the audience how life keeps moving forward, no matter if we are ready or not. For example, at first, Sarah doesn’t want to take any responsibility, but when the 13 hours that she is given by Jareth to find the way into the castle start, she doesn’t have time to figure things out. We have to make important decisions and wisely manage time, as it doesn’t last forever. It also symbolises the pressure that students may experience with school deadlines - we’re not ready, but we still have to finish the task successfully.

Fairy Tale Analysis: In what ways does Labyrinth remind you of a traditional fairy tale? Think about characters (hero, villain, magical helpers), the journey, and the ending.

Labirynth resembles a fairy tale (structure) in may ways. Sarah is a hound heroine that has to rescue her baby brother, Toby, from the Gobiln King. Like fairy tale protagonists, she enters a magical world where everything is different, and she has to be brave in order to successfully rescue her brother. Characters like Hoggle, Ludo💗, and Sir Didymus can be considered as magical helpers in trying to solve the labyrinth’s while overcoming challenges and many dangerous situations in order to reach the castle. Jareth is a typical villain: powerful and tempting. The story follows the hero’s journey, where Sarah learns important life lessons, and succeeds, through courage and self-growth. In the end, she returns home along with baby Toby.

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no lessons due to school trips

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no theatre lessons due to mock exams this week😢😢

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Theatre lesson nr. 26 - City interactive activity, Summative (lesson nr. 25)

Today me along with 2 friends who were upsent two weeks ago, did our summative. Avter a brainstorm where we came up with several ideas, we decided that we would give out little cards with messages. We thought of about 12 different inspiring/motivational messages that we would give out to people.

Some of the messages we wrote:

- „Dobrze Ci idzie”

- „Możesz być z siebie dumny/a”

- „Zrób dziś coś tylko dla siebie”

- „Dzięki, że jesteś”

Ms. Paulina said that we could give the cards out to our class, which we did. Some of our classmates returned them, but all of tem appreciated what we wrote. Later, we gave them out to our peers and other random people on the street.

During the lesson itself we created various stickers about things that we hate (BUNT). After some thinking i made a sticker about a rebellion against overworked students.

WE HAVE TO GIVE FEEDBACK FOR OUT TEACHER ABOUT WHAT WE THINK ABOUT THE LESONS, WHAT COULD BE IMPROVED!!

Unfortunately last week we didnt have theatre lessons due to a school trip, and the week prior i couldn’t make it.

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Theatre lesson nr. 24 - Unit IV happening and live theatre action

During the last lesson we mentioned the last unit which was improvisation. We mainly talked about various things related to our lessons, however the most imirtant part was discussing another summative, which was a happening. Zosia proposed many different fun ideas and we stuck with going to the park and saying complements to strangers.

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Theatre lesson nr. 23 - Summative: Improvisation

APRIL FOOLS

On todays lesson we had a summative from improvisation. During all etudes we had to remember about the principles of improvisation that we learned during the last few lessons - alliance, status and being YES. We all made up a scenario, an action or thing that we had to keep in mind during the scenes and wrote them on pieces of paper. We improvised in groups of three, and one of those people had to vhoose one card and that would be the mian focus of their improvisation.

I was in a group with Zosia and Ksawery and chose a card that said “STATEK KOSMICZNY GNIAZDO KONIA”. Initially, we weren’t sure what that meant, however we tried to interpret it and include it in our scene. In our improvisation scene we were in a spaceship about 5 light years away (apparently 4 minutes in real life, as Zosia said) from our target which was “gniazdo konia”. Zosia was the main leader here and showed me and Ksawery how “gniazdo konia” looks and shared her previous experiences from such space explorations. Overall, it was a very fun impro scene and I enjoyed it, as improvisation as a whole allows me to cut off my thoughts stress and anxiety related to school, and use the creative side of my brain. At the end, it turned out that our teacher, ms. Paulina 💗, wrote that phrase for our scene and explained that it’s a music band.

After everybody presented their scenes, we quickly played charades using quotes, movie/series titles and people. Our team won☺️. Ms. Paulina also told us about the upcoming Unit and the things we have to discuss and think about next time.

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Theatre lesson nr. 22 - Improvisation (repetition before summative)

During todays lesson we mainly focused on repeating our improvisation skills, as well as the key improvisation principles that we learned during the last few lessons, for the upcoming summative next week.

At the beginning of the lesson, we started with a quick 10 minute workout to “wake up” and be more energized and ready. After doing some yoga poses, we played some games that we were introduced to in the last semester. We played “hono”, “knife” and “pif-paf”. Then we just did some improvised scene using the key segments of such scene (etiude, alliance, status) in groups of three. This tome we made some changes - we could talk at all with each other, and made a rule called “freeze” that when a person would yell freeze, the people in the scene had to literally freeze and the person yelling would replace one “actor”.

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Theatre lesson nr. 21 - Impro: Alliance

We started todays lesson with repeating status and aliances. A group of three people were involved in a improvisation scene and were given a situation and the surroundings by the whole group. As we said 1, 2, 3 IMPROO - the scene automatically starts. At least two of the three people had to form aliances and then make an improvisation scene. For example, I was in a scene where we were improvised a scene at a playground.

We then played some of the games that we played during the last semester. We played the game where we had to remember eachother’s signs, in the rhythm of “We Will Rock You” - it was pretty difficult in terms of remembering each other’s signs, but I am pretty satisfied with my performance. We also made a rhythm by clapping or singing, which was pretty engaging.

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Theatre lesson nr. 20 - Kantor and Grotowski (improvisation)

During todays lesson we went outside. Due to the number of assessments, exams and projects, we decided that going out and having the lesson outside would be the best idea. Firstly, we went on a short walk and ate some ice cream :), an then we went to a nearby park called Morskie Oko. There we experimented with our improvisation scenes, as we did them in groups of three not pairs, like we did on previous lessons.

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Theatre lesson nr. 19 - Status in improvisation

We started today’s lesson by reviewing key theatre concepts such as etiuda, construction of dramaturgy, and briefly the TEAM principle. We determined etiuda as a short, improvised scene or performance. We also reviewed the categories of literature (drama, epic, and lyric), and examples of works from each category. The also repeated the concept of dramaturgy, which we touched on during the lesson nr. 17.

In the main part of the lesson, we went outside and created a stage by setting up chairs, so that two people improvised a scene while others were the audience. We focused on status in improvisation, which is the influence that a person (actor) has on the direction of the scene. The energy between the two people performing was key in creating a climax, a point where the scene becomes more engaging. We practiced this by setting different scenarios for our peers, such as a security officer and a person who lost their luggage, and we observed how the energy shifted based on the roles and situation.

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Theatre lesson nr. 18 - Improvisation

We started the lesson by discussing what improvisation is. We explored how to build an improvised scene and the things that we have apply to it.

We created a stage by rearranging the sofas, and there, in pairs, we each acted out two short scenes. In the first one the improvisation story was abstract, and in the second we could only answer with "yes." This exercise helped us with work spontaneously and collaborating by reacting a scene with a partner.

We also briefly discussed the topic of balancing energy in improvisation, as different energy between two people can affect the scene. Thats why it's important to balance these energy differences to make the scene feels more natural.

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Theatre lesson nr. 17 - Introduction of Unit 3

We started the lessons by talking about how we feel in the group - in terms of comfort, openness and involvement of the group. Then we wrote down the rules in the group, because some were not able to focus and maintain:).

THE RULES

- We support each other

- Phonies go in the box

- Don’t inter put eachother

- Don’t chew gum

- Umysł trzylatka

- We listen and we dont judge

- No disrespect towards others

- We can eat without disrupting

Moving on to the main part of the lesson, we talked about the construction of dramaturgy. We discussed some information about drama that we have mentioned so far during the last lessons, i.e. the climax, the TEAM principle (T-Tension, E-Emotion, A-Atmosphere, M-Meaning), the appearance of the protagonist and the antagonist in the drama, and the plot. To understand the topic more, we discussed the appearance of these features of drama in series and films that we know.

Then Ms. Paulina drew a graph that was divided into time and actions. We established that in series such as Breaking Bad or Young Sheldon, as well as in Magda Gessler’s episodes of Kuchenne Rewolucje, there is a similar script. In each of the series, we noticed that when there are 5 episodes, in each of them there is a moment of tension and the story piles up for it to e.g. In the second season, it was completed. Of course, in different series, depending on the number of episodes and the plot itself, this climax and the solution of the action takes place at a different time.

At the end of the lesson, we did a short game where we had to use creative thinking. Using an paper cup, we tried to show some other object. For example the paper cup became a telescope or a birthday hat.

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Theatre news: Jan Klata is the new director of the National Theatre in Warsaw

The Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Hanna Wróblewska, has selected Jan Klata to be the new director of the National Theatre in Warsaw with the start of the 2025-2026 season, in September 2025. Previously, he was also the director of the National Stary Theatre in Kraków for several years.

Jan Klata is considered to be one of Poland's best theatre directors. He graduated from the State Higher Theatre School in Warsaw and the Academy of Theatre Arts in Kraków. He directed over 30 productions - both in Poland and abroad. Klata's career skyrocketed in 2003, when je directed Rewizor (The Inspector General) at the Jerzy Szaniawski Theatre in Wałbrzych. However his 2004 production of Hamlet, titled H., at the Wybrzeże Theatre in Gdańsk made him even more popular (which we watched during our lessons).

Throughout his career, Klata has received many awards, including Paszport Polityki and the Konrad Swinarski Award for Best Director of the Year.

Sources:

- https://www.rp.pl/teatr/art41762081-jan-klata-dyrektorem-narodowego-w-warszawie-to-druga-narodowa-scena-ktora-pokieruje

- https://tvn24.pl/tvnwarszawa/srodmiescie/warszawa-jan-klata-dyrektorem-teatru-narodowego-st8290604

Photo: shared on Pinterest by Culture Trip, all credits to the author

Happy Winter break!!!:)

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Theatre lesson nr.16 - TEAM as a team

During todays lesson the main focus was working as a team and being creative. We started the lesson with drawing. Each student was given a piece of paper, as well as two pastels of choice (different colors).

We then began drawing, and at random moments, one of us would say "exchange," which meant that we had to pass our drawing to the person next to us. I found this exercise very fun, relaxing and engaging because we had to quickly think of something new to draw. Drawing isn’t something we usually do in high school, so it was a nice activity. I really enjoyed this exercise.

After that, we hang our abstract drawings and moved on to the next activity of the lesson. Ms. Paulina started showing us steps of an origami pattern. We had to precisely fold the paper to make sure that at the end the origami would work, although we didn’t know what we were making at first. In spite of a couple challanges along the way, we ended up with a small origami “envelope” where we could write a message to future us. I drew Makłowicz and some of my friends also wrote some lovely words 💗.

With some time to spare, we played a few games just like at the beginning of the semester. We played two rounds of the game "Killer," that Ksawery presented during our first summative assessment in November.

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Theatre lesson nr. 15 - H. Directed by Jan Klata

We began todays lesson by talking about school and the average amount of sleep in our group, which turned out to be 6 hours on average.

Then we started discussing the historical and political background during the communist regime, in order to understand the play that we were going to watch later in the lesson. We talked about the political system shifting from communism to capitalism, and compared living in PRL to life today. The key event that basically ended communism in Poland, was the strike in Stocznia Gdańska where he workers demanded that Anna Walentynowicz and Lech Wałęsa be allowed to return to their jobs after they were fired for working with independent organizations that were not controlled by the government. The teacher also introduced to us Henryka Krzywonos and her role in Polish history, as on August 15th, 1980, she stopped the tram she was driving in support of the strike. Through this, she stopped the enter transport in the city of Gdańsk, and then the strike spread further throughout the whole country.

We then tried to apply this to the play Hamlet. It symbolises the people who are left alone, struggling with change. Hamlet also represents the voice of the generation of our parent.

“Hamlet is me” - ms. Paulina🩷

After discussing topics that would broaden our perspectives, we started watching H. Directed by Jan Klata (a reinterpretation of Hamlet). At the beginning of the play, two men in fencing outfits are playing golf in the Stocznia Gdańska. The golf and costumes symbolize wealth and success, which deeply contrasts with the surroundings.

There are elements of H. that connect with Polish history, especially with the Stocznia Gdańska and these times. As an example, Hussars (which in the play is the dead king Hamlet) are used as symbols of Polish pride, courage, and greatness. The conversation between Horatio and Hamlet, as well as the appearance of Hamlet’s father’s ghost, is presented in a literary way.

In the next scene, French wine represents French bourgeoisie, extravagance, and snobbery. The actors constantly switch languages, showing a sense of separation. When the king speaks in French, others repeat after him, even though they probably don’t understand anything. Also when Hamlet angrily enters, the wine spills and he says everybody is "guilty." The peace sign used in the play is a reference to the solidarity movement in Poland, fighting for freedom. The table in the scene is treated as a sacrum object, symbolizing God, as the king dances on it.

Based on the background of the next scene, we can interpret that Hamlet and Ophelia are on a deserted island. Ophelia pulls out a birthday card and reads a silly poem. Their supposedly great and meaningful love is reduced to kitsch and toxicity. She then pulls out more similar cards, and different music plays from each one, creating a cacophony. This symbolizes what Hamlet feels. These cards come from glass bottles washed up on the shore. They eventually start breaking the glass bottles, and Ophelia collects the broken glass.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern - Hamlet’s fake friends, are wearing wigs, drinking wine and then dancing on the table. They also make the peace sign, and eventually Claudius joins them.

We ended the film with the scene where the director, Jan Klata, had the most famous and long monologue performed by people who can’t really perform, symbolizing the total collapse. They eventually are replaced by professional actors.