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City Garage and Joanna Klass of Arden 2, with the support of the Polish Consulate of Los Angeles, present the American West Coast Premiere of Teatr PROVISORIUM & Kompania Teatr's stage adaptation of the satirical underground classic novel, Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz.

Ferdydurke is an absurd variation on the Faust story. A young writer is transformed by a demonic professor of literature into an adolescent and sent back to school "to learn to do it right."

City Garage, whose primary focus is challenging contemporary drama from the world theater, and Arden 2, the Society for the Promotion of International Theater Excahneg and Dialog, the national producer of the show, have joined forces to host the visit of Teatr PROVISORIUM and Kompania Teatr of Lublin, Poland in the West Coast premiere of their critically acclaimed stage adaptation of Witold Gombrowicz's satirical masterpiece Ferdydurke.

The production, co-produced by City Garage, will have a limited engagement of twelve performances, three in Polish, and nine in English, March 30th through April 9th. All performances will be at City Garage, Santa Monica. Teatr PROVISORIUM and Kompania Teatr will also be performing and conducting workshops from March 22nd to March 27th at UCLA, Pomona College, San Diego State University, and Cal State Los Angeles.

Ferdydurke is an absurd variation on the Faust story. A young writer is transformed by a demonic professor of literature into an adolescent and sent back to school "to learn to do it right." This "education" of the narrator reveals the conventional and coercive nature of not only education and cultural life, but also of gender, sexuality, and class -- and his presence consistently produces a crisis wherever he appears. The play is directed by Janus Oprynski and Witold Mazurkiewicz, who is also in the ensemble with Jacek Brzezzinski, Witold Mazurkiewicz, Jaroslaw Tomica, and Michal Zgiet. The Los Angeles production is produced by Joanna Klass of Arden 2 and Frédérique Michel of City Garage. The English language adaptation of the Polish production is by Allen J. Kuharski. Stage design is by Jerzy Rudzki; Light and sound design is by Janus Oprynski. The National Tour of Teatr PROVISORIUM is being produced by Joanna Klass and Arden 2.

Teatr PROVISORIUM and Kompania Teatr's co-production of Ferdydurke was recently voted Best Production by an alternative theater in Poland in 1999, and was voted one of the best productions of the year overall, seconf only to the Warsaw National Theater. Teatr PROVISORIUM won a Fringe First Award in the Edinburgh Festival in 1992, along with numerous other festival and critics awards throughout Poland. Though this production marks their North American debut, Teatr PROVISORIUM and Kompania Teatr have previously performed in over a dozen countries in Europe and Asia. Teatr PROVISORIUM began as part of Poland's dynamic student experimental theatre movement in the 1970s, and was the first group to adapt Gombowicz's novel Ferdydurke for the stage.

Witold Gombrowicz [playwright and author, 1904-1969], the original enfant terrible of Polish Literature, was among the first European writers to openly address homosexuality, both in his work and his own life. His plays, little produced by American theater companies, have been produced in over thrity countries since they first began appearing on the stages of Western Europe in the 1960s (his work was banned in Poland until the mid-70s). Ivona, Princess of Burgundia is probably his best known play, having been produced to critical acclaim in Canada, Great Britain, Japan, Turkey, and Sweden.

Also well known for his novels and diaries, Gombowicz's satirical novel Ferdydurke (1937) has become an underground classic with a passionate cult following. In France, L'Express dubbed Gombrowicz "the greatest unknown writer of our time," and last year, writer Gary Indiana described Ferdydurke as "one of the hidden treasures of XX century literature." A new translation of Ferdydurke by Danuta Borchardt, with an introduction by Susan Sontag will be published by Yale University Press later this year.

The tour, originating at Swarthmore College in Philadelphia with performances also at the School of theater Arts at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and in New York at Raw Space, marks the first time that a professional Polish production of a work by Gombrowicz comes to the United States. It is also the first use of the stage adaptation in English (which is freely based on Borchardt's translation) by Allen J. Kuharski, Director of Theater Studies program at Swarthmore College. An expert on Gombrowicz's theater, Kuharski has traveled twice to Poland over the last six months to work with the company on the English language version of this production.