News

Upcoming Premieres in the 2025/2026 Season

20/01/2026

We have another three premieres to look forward to on the three stages of the National Theatre before the 2025/2026 season draws to a close. From contemporary American essays, to the prose of a Polish Nobel laureate, to one of the most canonical texts in all of Polish drama – in the coming months, three extraordinary directors will stage works by three authors who specialise in examining what lies beneath the surface of reality.



Rebecca Solnit
Men Explain Things to Me 
Directed by Klaudia Gębska
World premiere: March 27, 2026, at the Scena Studio

Pop culture has accustomed us to certain simplifying images and shaped the attitudes we adopt towards the unknown. As a result, we now exist in a world where gender discrimination remains commonplace, we use cultural stereotypes without a shred of shame, and we use words that have lost their original meaning. So what can we do to see the world as it really is, not just as we are told it is? Dale Cooper, among others, will be seeking answers to this very question. As an FBI agent, Cooper is no stranger to these most challenging of puzzles. 

Klaudia Gębska directs based on a famous collection of essays by Rebecca Solnit, an author who was involved in the early days of the #metoo movement and inspired the term "mansplaining." To balance this critical perspective on reality, Mariusz Gołosz, one of Poland's most compelling contemporary playwrights, co-created the adaptation. The world premiere of the play, translated by Anna Dzierzgowska, is scheduled for International Theatre Day.

For more, see the play's website here: "Men Explain Things to Me"   

 

Olga Tokarczuk
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
Directed by Ewa Platt
Premiere: April 25, 2026, at the Bogusławski Hall

As one of the most acclaimed books by Polish Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk, this multi-layered story explores both the most mundane things as well as that which is written in the stars. Janina Duszejko, the main character, is a person of extraordinary empathy, an empathy which she directs primarily towards those most vulnerable things that fall victim to human actions: animals. Standing on the boundary between life and death, she watches a bloody retaliation unfold against her former tormentors. And we watch too. But are we actually capable of assessing the truthfulness of this account?

This story of a human being who passes away but leaves behind, above all else, moving stories, will be brought to the stage of the National Theatre by Ewa Platt – a young director who has already shown audiences she is a specialist in exploring the darkness of the human soul.

For more, see the play's website here: "Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead"   

 

Gabriela Zapolska
The Morality od Mrs. Dulska
Directed by Anna Augustynowicz
Premiere: June 20, 2026, at the Jerzy Grzegorzewski Wierzbowa Stage

120 years after the world premiere of Gabriela Zapolska's acclaimed work, we once again turn to The Morality of Mrs. Dulska to examine what kind of dirty laundry is best washed at home. Anna Augustynowicz, staging a production at the National Theatre for the first time, will focus her interpretation of the canonical work on the issue of desire, something which consumes the heroines and heroes in a variety of ways. Unfulfilled ambitions, unquenched desires, unhealthy rivalry, and impure thoughts – all are to be found in this story of the most famous of Polish families.

We feel we know this story inside out, but have we ever truly looked beneath the surface? The diverse range of attitudes the Dulskis adopt toward the world sometimes makes them seem helpless, sometimes naive, but above all, "simply" human. Is this why Zapolska's work entertains us so much? Or, perhaps, by laughing, are we actually trying to cover up our own weaknesses? 

For more, see the play's website here: "The Morality of Mrs. Dulska"   

 

  • THE POLISH THERMOPYLAE

    In his first play at the National Theatre, director Jan Klata has opted for Tadeusz Miciński's The Polish Thermopylae. 

  • INFINITE JEST

    Premiere staged by Kamil Białaszek. His work intersects with a legend of postmodernism, David Foster Wallace. 

  • CHARLATANS

    “When I’m not acting, life is black and white,” says the heroine of Pablo Remón’s play. Charlatans directed by Grzegorz Małecki 

  • HAMLET

    Jan Englert crowns his twenty-eight seasons of artistic work at the National Theatre with a performance of Hamlet.

  • HEAVEN AND HELL

    Although Maria Wojtyszko's play touches upon the painful subject of losing loved ones, Jakub Krofta's deft staging provides light entertainment for the whole family. 

  • OTHER DELIGHTS

    This adaptation of the novel Other Delights is the second staging of one of Jerzy Pilch's works at the National Theatre, following The Holy Father's Skis.  

  • FAUST

    Faust is a story based on an ancient legend of a scholar who yearns so much for just a moment of happiness that he makes a pact with the devil. 

  • A DREAM PLAY

    After the well-received Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Sławomir Narloch returned to the National Theatre with another premiere – A Dream Play by Strindberg.

     

  • KING LEAR

    King Lear may be Shakespeare's boldest examination of human nature. Jan Englert will play the title role in the National Theatre's production.

  • WAITING FOR GODOT

    "What do we do now? Wait. [...] We're waiting for Godot". Piotr Cieplak directs Waiting for Godot by Beckett. Is this a classic yet? Does it still have its avant-garde power?

  • FREDRO: THE JUBILEE YEAR

    To celebrate 230 years since Aleksander Fredro's birth, the National Theatre invites you to an evening dedicated to the life and works of Poland’s greatest comedy writer. 

  • TALES FROM THE VIENNA WOODS

    Małgorzata Bogajewska directs for the second time at the National Theatre. This time she draws on Ödön von Horváth's 1931 drama.

  • THE THEATRE MAKER

    The play by Thomas Bernhard, one of the most outstanding playwrights of the second half of the 20th century. In the title role – Jerzy Radziwiłowicz. 

  • ALICE'S WONDERLAND

    Have you ever quarreled with the Time or visited a forest where things have no names? Alice’s Wonderland is a musical performance based on the famous novel by Lewis Carroll. 

  • THE MISANTHROPE

    Jan Englert stages a classic play by Molière. What is Alcest's misanthropy: an uncompromising commitment to the truth or a doomed uprising against social conventions?

  • THE DECALOGUE

    A meditation upon the moral foundations of the present – an iconic work of Polish cinema, rethought thirty-five years after its creation by Krzysztof Kieślowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz. 

  • MARY STUART

    Grzegorz Wiśniewski returns to the classic drama about human passions interwoven in a ruthless machinery of history and intrigue.

  • MÜNCHHAUSEN FOR ADULTS

    Baron von Münchhausen lived in the 18th century and told incredible stories about himself. Maciej Wojtyszko directs his own play about the famous adventurer and mystifier.

  • Solidarity with Ukraine | Солідарні з Україною

    The ensemble of the National Theatre stands in solidarity with the Ukrainians who are fighting for the independence of their homeland.

  • PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK

    1900. On a hot, stormy day, Mrs Appleyard's boarding school residents go on a picnic near Hanging Rock. The new theatrical version of the Australian prose classics. 

  • SNAKE SKIN

    Artur Urbański directs his own play which main character is Ruth Berlau, one of Bertolt Brecht's closest associates and life companions.

  • AUTUMN SONATA

    A story about the need for love and acceptance, about an inherited emotional coldness, about the psychological costs of creativity. A theatrical version of a film script by Ingmar Bergman. 

  • MOTHER JOAN OF THE ANGELS

    A performance about the need to experience something that surpasses us. In the title role of the prioress – Małgorzata Kożuchowska. 

  • HOW TO BE LOVED

    This is the performance about love and moral responsibility for another person as well as the mechanisms controlling human memory. The dramatisation of the story by Kazimierz Brandys.


  • LUNGS

    Briliant, full of humour and touching love story of a young couple. Breakups and comebacks, passion and sex, the first important decisions and the search for meaning in a complex, modern world.


  • UHLANS

    The Museum of All-Time Polish Uhlans. Exhibits of the national exacerbation. A serious comedy in three acts about the entanglement in myths of Polishness. 


  • THE IMAGE MAKERS

    The truth about the essence of creation and responsibility in art. Director Viktor Sjöström is working on the film The Phantom Carriage, based on the novel by Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf. 

  • FOREFATHER'S EVE

    Mickiewicz's poetic drama interpreted by Lithuanian Master Eimuntas Nekrošius — theatre visionary known for his unique theatrical language.


  • KORDIAN

    The Polish nation's tragic choice: to die heroically in the name of a noble idea or live a life "making shoes for dogs"? — the alternative presented to Kordian in two parables.

  • FLEA THE SWINDLER

    Tremendous fun and great laughs – not just for kids. The antics of the Flea are directed by Anna Seniuk with the music composed by Maciej Małecki.