Marta Górnicka is a director, author and singer. She is an alumna of the directing programme at the Aleksander Zelwerowicz Theatre Academy, the Frédéric Chopin School of Music in Warsaw and the Warsaw University. With support from the Zbigniew Raszewski Theater Institute in Warsaw, she founded the Chorus of Women. Its first production, This is the Chorus Speaking, was premiered in Warsaw in 2010. Her pieces Magnificat and Requiemachine were presented at festivals such as Foreign Affairs in Berlin (2014), Spring in the Netherlands and the Mess Festival in Sarajevo. Magnificat won several awards, including first prize at Fast Forward, the European festival for young directors at the state theatre in Braunschweig, where Górnicka then created her first work in German: M(other) Courage, which was nominated in 2016 for the prestigious German Theatre Prize Der Faust in the category of direction (play). In 2017 Górnicka's Hymne an die Liebe (Hymn to love) made its debut in Germany at the Maxim Gorki Theatre. In May 2018, Górnicka directed Jedem das Seine. Ein Manifest at the Kammerspiele in Munich, examining neo-fascism and the backlash towards the female body. It was co-produced with the Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin. On 3 October 2018 she presented a production of the libretto that she adapted from the Grundgesetz (Basic Law) in front of the Brandenburg Gate, with a chorus of 50 professional and amateur actors from different spectra of civil society. This work was re-staged in front of the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) in Karlsruhe in May 2019. To deepen her research on the possibilities for choruses, she is founding the Political Voice Institute at Maxim Gorki Theatre in the fall of 2019. The institute is a workshop centre for the use of the collective voice/body and language. Jedem das Seine. Ein Manifest will be shown at the Gorki during the 4. Berliner Herbstsalon.She opened the 21/22 season with Still life – a chorus for animals, people and all other lives.
Since the 2020/2021 season she has been a member of the Artistic Advisory Board, which advises Artistic Director Shermin Langhoff on the artistic direction of the Gorki Theatre.
Photo: Esra Rotthoff