Radek Rychcik belongs to the young generation of artists creating contemporary theatre discourse in Poland. Graduate of the Polish Philology Department of Warsaw University and National Theatrical Academy in Kraków in the Drama Directing Department, he is recognized as one of the most talented and original artists of his generation with radically new interpretations of theatre.
He began his career as an assistant to renowned director Krystian Lupa on Factory 2 and later worked on Stanisław Wyspiański’s drama Protesilas and Laodamia. In 2008, he directed Dictator, based on the Charlie Chaplin film, for the Wybrzeże sztuki Festival in Gdańsk. He premiered an adaptation of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary at the Dramatyczny Theatre in Warsaw, following with productions of A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments by Roland Barthes at the same theatre, and Versus: In the Jungle of Cities, an adaptation from Bertolt Brecht at the Nowy Theatre in Kraków and the Under the Radar Festival in New York.
Radek Rychcik’s work In the Solitude of the Cotton Fields which originally premiered in Poland in September 2009 has captured a great deal of attention as it has made the rounds at a number of festivals around the world. Starting in North America – from PICA’s Time-Based Art Festival and REDCAT in Los Angeles to On the Boards in Seattle, Under the Radar New York and the PuSH Festival in Vancouver, through South America – with the prestigious Santiago a Mil Festival in Chile as well as in Asia: PAMS in Seoul and Europe – Nancy and Berlin. The performance is based on the searing text by the late French playwright and enfant terrible Bernard-Marie Koltès and backed by live music from the art-rock band Natural Born Chillers.