NIKOLETA ALEKSIEVA

Stage design, costumes and multimedia for the play 'We're doing fine here'- Dorota Maslowska (2013)
In National Theatre 'Ivan Vazov'
Director - Desislava Shpatova

Photographer - Ivan Donchev

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Theatre critic Justyna Sobolewska called this play, "a macabre comedy about Poles who do not know who they are - or might not be there at all". 
Masłowska wants to demonstrate that "there is no statistical Pole". She picks apart the commercialism of this world, juxtaposing it with the realities of families who barely get on. She mocks celebrities and media personalities - she uses dramaturgy to attack every aspect of modern life in Poland in order to get to the essence of 'Polishness' and to whether it is, after all, a good thing or a bad thing.
The play's characters are three women who represent three different generations of a family and cannot find a common language.
They share the absence of tranquility in a way too small apartment-room. In the play they even call it “lack of room”. Covering all the walls of the stage, in the center a room is outlined which becomes the accent. As opposed to the plain walls, the inhabited place is piled with stuff. The family uses all sorts of found objects, changes their purpose to suit their everyday needs. 
The scenography is made out of available materials, old and recycled requisite. The stage is as clean and unreclaimed as possible, only the walls are covered with corrugated. The character of the material perfectly “dresses” the situation in which the family is. The wall of their room is full of chalk writings and on top is written “working progress decor” in accordance to their formal life.
The characters exist on the verge of the misery (they don’t throw the plastic bags but wash them, they “shop” from the paper trash bins, they only buy discounted goods). We see their empty lives through the prism cheap ads, TV shows, lifestyle magazines and pseudo-films.