April 2019. Polish teachers start a nationwide strike. Those who join the strike break the school system to a half. The society is divided. On one hand we have gestures of solidarity (supporting teachers in various ways) on the other - against acts of hostility (hate in social media). Teachers demand not only higher wages. The strike also stands for common values like dignity and demands the structural changes to the educational system.
Unfortunately, negotiations with the right-wing government fail. Support for the strike decreases among the society.
June. Summer break. The protest is suspended. Strike issues fade away. With the Covid-pandemia and the first lockdown the problems of the education system lose significance and fall into the background.
At this moment the Laboratory of Social Theater, a part of the Association of Social Pedagogues, starts working on a new performance about the strike - Lessons of Resistance.
We work using our own school memories and simultaneously collect teacher’s strike stories and transform them into pieces of art.
Scenario gets ready. The performance takes place in a former school building - located in the Center of Warsaw - the whole area is our stage.
Three weeks left to premiere.
November. The government bans all live public performances.
What should we do? Brainstorm. Decisions. Let’s do it on Zoom platform.
None of us know how. We do it for the first time. Euforia, trust, cooperation, compassion blends with doubts.
Time goes by. Common lunches and quick walks with the dog between rehearsals. Gimbals. Gigabytes. Strike banners. Promotion tools. Dec. the 15th 2020, day of the premiere. Final recordings and last scenography production.
Please wait till the host will let you in.
More than a hundred participants join us in each of the three days of performing Lessons of Resistance. Audience listens to a story of the strike for over an hour and half, and stays with us way longer to share experiences after. Some teachers say: thanks for this sign of solidarity, we’ve been waiting for this kind of support. We are the school. We all.
The performance Lessons of Resistance was live transmitted on zoom platform. It has been screened in more than three hundred home computers, laptops or other electronic devices.