Modjeska Art & Culture Club: October 2024

The Helena Modjeska Art & Culture Club in cooperation with the Institute of National Remembrance invites you to a monodrama written by Polish actor, Sebastian Rys, entitled "Family War Stories: Zofia Rysiowna" and presented on Sunday, November 3, 2024 at 6:30 PM at the Los Angeles Performing Arts Conservatory, 10931 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064.

RSVP to Beata Czajkowska, at Beata.J.Czajkowska@gmail.com. Free admission for club members, $30 per person for guests. Payment by check made payable to "Helena Modjeska Art & Culture Club" with note about the theater, to PO Box 4288 Sunland CA 91041, or paypal to prezes@modjeska.org. Parking behind building or on Pico Blvd. Surrounding streets have parking restrictions...

"ZOFIA RYSIÓWNA: PRAGNIENIE ŻYCIA

"With our thoughts, we reach memories as quickly as with our eyesight to the stars. Looking at the starry sky, we see the black dome of the Earth's firmament sparkling with diamonds. The stars are seemingly equally distant, but in reality, they are separated from us and from each other, by thousands of light years. Thought has a similar path to memories recorded in memory, although some lose their shine."

Let these thoughts accompany us, calling up from memory the recorded slides, which can now shine anew, brightened with the power of our hearts. The heroine of our meeting today is Zofia Rysiówna. A woman from Nowy Sącz, a liaison officer, an actress, a mother and a wife, a strict but fair and dedicated person.

She will open for us the world of family memories of the Ryś family from Nowy Sącz. Continuing the family saga, we will follow "Zosia" in this story, because that was her war nickname, and we will try to see the youth of Nowy Sącz, their activities and sports, observed through her eyes. We will meet Rysiówna's school professors and seek to recognize the character traits of the so-called The War Generation, with whom we have less and less in common. Perhaps she will reveal to us a distant reflection of Jan Karski, a secret emissary – she took part in his liberation from German prison – and reveal the later dramatic fates of the family and the inhabitants of this city related to it.

I do not know if she will take us with her beyond the walls of the German concentration camp, we cannot really expect that, but I think that at the end of the story Zofia Rysiówna will invite us in front of her beloved radio microphone and onto the theatrical stage. Her post-war life was hidden and here too, let's not expect too effusive of a report. What can we expect? Honest words, a warm heart, and something on the border of a dream and intense experience. The stage performance combines: the testimony of an indirect witness to history, archival radio recordings, and poems with elements of a fictional narrative in musical accents.

The whole play has been based on Memories of May by Wanda Straszyńska with reminiscencies about the family and the book "On the Paths of Fantom" by Jacek Ryś. Let this meeting be an engaging journey into the recesses of memory, into the world of living remembrances.

~ ~ Sebastian Ryś

SEBASTIAN RYŚ

Sebastian Ryś was born in Wrocław in 1986 and is a graduate of the Aleksander Zelwerowicz Theatre Academy in Warsaw. An actor, a sensitive interpreter of romantic heroes. He made his debut while still a student at the Nowy Theatre in Słupsk, in the role of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz in Andrzej Maria Marczewski's original performance Witkacy jest do X-tej with music by Marek Dyjak. He collaborated with the Old Town Theatre and the Polish Theatre in Warsaw. In the Płock Dramatic Theatre he made himself known as: S.B. in Szymon Bogacz's play Three Nen of Different Ages directed by Julia Mark, as well as the title role of W. Shakespeare's Hamlet directed by Marek Mokrowiecki. He was permanently associated with the Polish Theatre in Wrocław, where he played, among others: in Janusz Wiśniewski's The Imaginary Invalid and in Bartosz Wyszomirski's Mirandolina. He also has film and TV roles under his belt.

In his search for theatre heroes, he sought to engage in radio theatre and his own short productions. In his monodrama entitled Fish Soup in Odessa, Sebastian Ryś resurrects the unfinished story of the war hero, Jan Karski, winning numerous awards: Main prize at the Strzała Północy Festival in Koszalin. Main prize of the XLIII Tyskie Spotkania Teatralne, and two Jury prizes, at the Solo Olsztyn OSTJA Grand Prix; and at the Festival of Original Arts and Adaptations, WINDOWISKO, Gdańsk. Ryś is a beneficiary of the "Kultura Polska na Świecie" programme of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. He took part in the international United Solo Festival in New York, performing there the English version of the monodrama The Fish Soup in Odessa.

With his vision, he set the tone for the artistic expression in the radio play entitled Scars of Freedom. He is the co-creator of Stains of Memory, a production of the Polish Radio Theatre. Ryś is also the co-writer, director and actor in the spectacle about Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, martyred by the communists in 1984, entitled Burning Embers of Love. The actor is also a theatre instructor with pedagogical training and organizes poetry readings and concerts.

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