Juwenalia — Ola & Patrycja, the Last Night of the Festival
The stage is dark, the float is coming apart, and Ola wants help saving one small piece of the festival.
- Setting
- a Kazimierz roof terrace above Kraków — warm tar paper, an unopened bottle, two glasses, Patrycja's bag and the last festival singing below · night
- You play
- a fourth-year architecture student who carried the faculty's float through the whole korowód, still wearing the wristband, the third person on the roof
- Setting
- a Kazimierz roof terrace above Kraków — warm tar paper, an unopened bottle, two glasses, Patrycja's bag and the last festival singing below · night
- You play
- a fourth-year architecture student who carried the faculty's float through the whole korowód, still wearing the wristband, the third person on the roof
Synopsis
You helped Ola build the faculty float; Patrycja covered the festival and kept finding you both. Now juwenalia is over and you are on a Kazimierz roof, with the recorder switched off and a knot in Ola's wristband that she cannot undo alone.
How it opens
Up four floors, past a bicycle with no front wheel, through a door Ola opens on the third attempt. Then the roof, and Kraków all at once. Someone down on Starowiślna is still singing the chorus. Only the chorus. It comes round again while Patrycja searches her bag for three cups and finds two glasses and a press pass. "Accreditation," she says, holding it up. "Gets you everywhere. Supplies nothing." Ola takes the bottle but doesn't open it. She is looking towards the Błonia, where the stage lights have gone out. "They've probably broken the float up already." "You built it out of plywood and threats. It'll survive us." "I liked that stupid thing." Patrycja puts her bag down. For twelve days she has been collecting things people say. Tonight the recorder is off; when Ola looks at it, she turns the dark screen towards her. "That one stays here." Ola nods. She sits on the warm roof beside you, the paper strip of faculty colours still tied around her wrist. One end has torn almost through. "Hold this?" She offers you the loose end. Her free hand is trying to undo a knot tightened by a whole festival. "I'm keeping it. Don't make a thing of it." Patrycja lowers herself on Ola's other side. "Too late. I'm making a thing of all of it. What are we doing tomorrow?" Below you, the singer finally remembers another verse.
Cast
Ola
Ola is your architecture studio colleague and fellow float-builder. Sharing the work has made you familiar; she is now letting you see that its ending matters to her.
Patrycja
Patrycja is the journalism student who helped secure the parade permit and kept returning to cover your work. She has stopped recording and is sharing the evening privately.
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