A contemporary Greek tragedy

Violence rarely ends with the moment of its eruption. In Europa, Krzysztof Warlikowski explores how trauma festers across generations – settling into families, memories and silences, and shaping lives long after the original catastrophe has passed. Based on Wajdi Mouawad’s play Europa’s Pledge, it unfolds as a contemporary tragedy shaped by fractured remembrance. At its centre stands Europa, a woman haunted by a massacre she witnessed as a child – carried out by her own people. She summons her daughters, who struggle to speak, remember, and connect, bound to a past they did not experience, yet cannot escape. The story emerges in fragments: names of atrocities, some real, some invented, blur fact and fiction, confronting the audience with repression and the instability of history. Europa exposes violence, guilt and the fragile act of narration itself. Playing with gender roles and expectations of womanhood, it reveals how bodies and voices become carriers of memory. In a time marked by inherited fears and unresolved conflicts, the personal becomes political and the piece resonates as a parable of our present.

Produced by Nowy Teatr, Warsaw. Coproduced by Théâtre de Liège.

With support of the Polish Institute Düsseldorf