THE STORY: Ranging across two centuries and jumping from Paris to Warsaw to Washington, D.C., and back to Paris, the action of the play is a tumbling procession of heightened short scenes, mostly very funny and all strikingly inventive, which dramatize the plight of the artist (Chopin) who seeks to use his fame and talent to serve his beleaguered homeland (Poland) in its fight for freedom and national identity. Both a Polish hero and an international celebrity, Chopin is sometimes permuted into Lech Walesa, while others in the play move from being famous personages of Chopin’s time to such diverse and modern figures as Hitler, Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II—plus a friendly, yet clearly menacing Russian bear. In the end the forces of destiny overwhelm the opposition—but not the spirit—of the frail artist who, in describing his own death and burial, makes it clear that his heart still beats for Poland—and for freedom from oppression wherever and whenever it may occur.
An exceptionally inventive, funny and stimulating play that makes highly imaginative and theatrical use of artistic and political elements in the life of Frederic Chopin to point up some disquieting parallels in our own time.
“Phil Bosakowski is a cunning humorist. There are enough verbal, visual and musical jokes in his CHOPIN IN SPACE to keep you thinking for a long time about passion, inspiration, politics, religion, history and—since this is an affectionate tribute to the playwright’s Polish origins—nationality.” —The New York Times.
“Unique, risky, and inventively staged, it manages to be avant-garde without being pretentious, to have a point of view without being pedantic.” —Yale Daily News.
