Good comedy writers have a sense of irony, which in turn imparts them with a sense of proportion. Accordingly, they know that some subjects call for serious treatment. Juliusz Machulski, director and writer of (among others) numerous comedies, was commissioned by the Old Theatre to write and direct a play that would be serious in tone. Machulski was also involved in staging the first production of of the play, Machia, whose protagonist is Niccolò Machiavelli, the Florentine diplomat, lawyer, philosopher, and author of the renowned treatise on power, The Prince. Machulski explains his choice of protagonist as follows:
What fascinated me about Machiavelli is that, as early as in the 14th century, he was capable of pinpointing what humanity should know about power, how to obtain it, and most importantly – how to hold on to it and why it is lost.
It is no accident of scheduling that the first staging of the play took place on the 545th anniversary of the protagonist’s birth. Nor is the artistic presence of Machulski in Lublin a coincidence. As a child, he spent several years here, when his parents worked in what was then the Lublin Theatre.
