Minetti. Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man, Teatr Polonia

Minetti. Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man, Teatr Polonia. A story of an actor who waits — for a director, for a role, for his second life. But just as much, it is a play about a man who can no longer live except through stories, memories, and masks.

On April 2, 2025, Aula Artis in Poznań hosted the performance of Minetti. Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man, directed by Andrzej Domalik, with Jan Peszek delivering a masterful portrayal in the title role. Thomas Bernhard’s play — in Monika Muskała’s translation — is the monologue of an aging actor who arrives at a hotel in Ostend to meet with a theater director. While waiting for this uncertain encounter, Minetti recounts his past, his relationship with the stage and the audience, his disappointments, and unfulfilled ambitions.

The play unfolded in an elegant yet claustrophobic waiting room — a metaphor for the protagonist’s entire life: tense, resigned, and marked by an unfulfilled love of theater. Within this emotionally charged space, other characters’ stories also unfolded — each in their own way trapped in waiting: the Lady (Małgorzata Zajączkowska), the Girl (Zofia Domalik), the Porter (Łukasz Borkowski), the Bellboy (Vova Makovskyi). Their presence — at times tender, at times grotesque — underscored Minetti’s loneliness, his detachment from the present, and the universality of his experience.

This was theater built on word, rhythm, and gaze — theater that did not seek attention but consumed it. Every gesture by Jan Peszek testified to both the pain and the power of art.

Minetti is not only a story about an actor but also about the audience — about our need for identification, our projections, and our disappointments. Bernhard wrote about theater, but he struck at the heart of the human condition. In this staging — stark, precise, and deeply moving — we could see our own fear of passing time and our longing for meaning, even when we have long since lost faith in finding it.