Libido Romantico, directed by Justyna Wielgus, at the Rotterdams Centrum voor Theater in Rotterdam

200 years ago, the premiere of Ballads and Romances was accompanied by scandal and social unrest.

Mickiewicz was accused of immorality and perversity. He spoke in the language of the lowest social class, granting it the right to embody its fantasies and desires. Filled with eroticism, sensuality, and love-driven madness, these texts also served an emancipatory role—becoming a manifesto of a new sensitivity, breaking down class hierarchies and advocating for a democracy of feelings. Through his ballads, Mickiewicz introduced new, socially unacceptable images that struck directly at bourgeois prudishness. Can his texts still provoke similar unease today?

In Libido Romantico, actors and creators throw out a challenge to contemporary society. Drawing on these classic, seemingly tamed and sanctified texts of the national poet, they rediscover their own voices within them.

The text is based on Adam Mickiewicz’s Ballads and Romances and improvisations by the actors of Theatre 21.