WALKING

Can you walk and think? Can you think and remain still? What if the rhythm of your steps starts to dictate the rhythm of your thoughts?

Walking is not a performance you watch from the comfort of your seat. It is an experience that turns the audience into active participants, making their bodies, steps, and breaths part of the performance.  

Led by choreographer and actor Tomasz Jan Wygoda, participants will set out on a nearly three-kilometre walking tour through the maze that is the Polish National Opera. They will walk through narrow corridors, staircases, lifts, paint shops, costume-making shops, an upholstery shop, the laundry room, costume storage, and backstage, all of which are normally inaccessible, foreign, and unfamiliar to the audience. Architecture will not merely be decoration; it will be a partner in its own right and a generator of meaning.

The tour is inspired by Gehen, a novella by Thomas Bernhard, one of the 20th century's most uncompromising writers. Recurring phrases, looped sentences, and reflections that lead to other reflections create a linguistic spiral in which walking becomes a way of experiencing the world and confronting the limits of one's own reason.

In Agnieszka Olsten's performance, literature, architecture, and choreography intersect to create one intense score. Bernharda's repetitive language mirrors Wygoda's recurring gestures and movement sequences. The theatrical spaces dictate the tempo, change the perspective, disorient, delight, and inspire the senses. Participants don't just watch this relationship; they co-create it through their movements, presence, and physical effort.

Walking is a site-specific performance in which architecture is not merely decoration and movement does not merely illustrate the text. Every step becomes a thought; every change of location, a change of perspective; and every stop, an opportunity to hear something new.

Looking is not enough. You need to walk.

This walking performance requires active audience participation. The maximum number of participants per date is 20.

The tour leads through various theatre spaces, including ones normally inaccessible to the audience.

We recommend wearing comfortable clothes and footwear.