We warmly invite you to the performance Meltdown by Małgorzata Lech.
The show was created as part of the OFF Polska program organized by the Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute, and it will be presented twice at the Nowa Huta Cultural Centre!
October 24, 2025 | 7:00 PM
October 25, 2025 | 7:00 PM
Studio KCC
MELTDOWN
A documentary performance directed by Małgorzata Lech.
“Once it builds up, it has to explode,” says the mother of a neurodivergent daughter.
They arrive for a shared holiday with the mother’s partner. There should be fun at the beach, the sound of the waves, and relaxation on an inflatable mattress. But will it all start again? Will what has built up finally burst?
Their story begins in 1997, when the word neurodiversity was not yet present in public awareness, not used by psychologists or psychiatrists, and when Asperger’s syndrome was rarely diagnosed in young girls.
The stage “here and now” encompasses several moments across their timeline, culminating in a seaside holiday as the daughter turns eighteen. It is a documentary love story – about the power of the mother–daughter bond: a story both similar to many others and yet unlike any other. A docu-drama, a docu-thriller, a rollercoaster full of unexpected turns.
The performance features both professional actors and the real-life protagonists, who appear as themselves in the film layer of the piece. What makes it exceptional is the honesty and self-irony with which they tell their own story – their determination to fight for autonomy, for the possibility of separate lives, despite being bound by the strongest and most difficult of ties.
It is not only a retrospective account of a teenage pregnancy, trauma, family oppression, and the lack of systemic support – a fight for dignity and the possibility of a “normal” life, with the constant question of what “normal” really means and who defines it. Above all, it is a story about the spectrum of womanhood. About shame and shamelessness. About the beauty and sorrows of too-early motherhood, and the longing to escape from it. About escapes that succeeded, distant journeys, a passionate love affair, and the sometimes desperate desire to dive deep into the fullness and potential of female experience.
It is also a road story, a journey towards something better – “from somewhere, you don’t know where, but you know for sure that at the end there is something better than what you have now.”
The mother – the central figure – would never call herself a heroine. She cannot undo the painful past, but her present and her future are hers alone. She does not merely try to survive – she fights for herself and for her daughter, without calculation, paying any price – here and now.
Script & Direction: Małgorzata Lech
Movement Direction: Iga Załęczna
Video Projections: Peter Fick
Music: Kamil Malchar
Stage Objects: Kamila Lech
Lighting Design: Daniel “Qman” Kuźma
Production & Coordination: Jurgita Zaikauskas, Marta Pawlik
Cast
Mother: Katarzyna Kopczyk
Daughter: Karolina Lichocińska
Also featuring Agnieszka and Natalia as themselves
Visual Identity: Paulina Paździera
Photography: Tobiasz Papuczys
