What is a state built on a lie?
What does inheritance mean when bonds have long since been broken?
Succession is a contemporary reimagining of an experiment conceived by Pedro Calderón de la Barca in the seventeenth century.
Anna Smolar returns to the question of the social contract between parents and children, between the adult world and the younger generation. Through the story of a royal family, she asks how we might understand today one of the most insidious experiments in upbringing depicted in the canon of European literature. Can Calderón’s philosophical reflections on free will, illusion and truth still offer a mirror for our own time?
The creators revisit the characters of the famous Baroque drama while shifting their meanings and redistributing their roles. They tell the story of Basilio, King of Poland, presented here as a progressive ruler boldly confronting the crises of his time; of Clotaldo, who raised Sigismund; and of Rosaura, Estrella and Astolfo — three women who play significant roles in the life of the controversial prince.
Who will take the Polish throne?
And is that really the most important question we can ask?
Anna Smolar is a Polish-French theatre director and translator, graduated in Literary Studies from Université Paris-Sorbonne. She is regarded as one of the most talented directors of her generation in contemporary Polish theatre. Born in Paris and based in Warsaw, she has developed a distinctive body of work exploring the tensions between individual experience and larger social and political structures, her work moves between different theatrical cultures and languages. Her performances often begin with existing literary or historical material, which she approaches from a contemporary perspective.
Smolar works across Poland, France and Germany, with productions at leading European institutions including the Théâtre National de Strasbourg, La Colline – théâtre national in Paris, the Opéra de Lille and the Münchner Kammerspiele.
Her work has received some of Poland’s most important theatre and cultural awards, including:
- Polityka’s Passport Award in the Theatre category, for “intimate and empathetic theatre that approaches marginalised subjects with imagination and humour” (2016).
- Best Director Award at the Divine Comedy International Theatre Festival for Melodrama (2023).
- Grand Prix at the 31st National Competition for the Staging of a Contemporary Polish Play, awarded to the creators and performers of Orpheus at TR Warszawa (2024).
- Konrad Swinarski Award for Best Director of the 2024/2025 season for A Woman Alone.
