Get involved!
Interested in bringing a workshop or production of WOJTEK to your university or theatre? Are you passionate about puppetry or Polish history? Do you just really like bears? If so, you can reach me at info@BenjaminRobertsMusic.com or use this little contact form!
Please reach out to preview the script, score, or demo materials. More coming soon!
– Benjamin Roberts
Synopsis.
Based on true events, WOJTEK is the story of a legendary bear — brought to life onstage by puppetry — and the Polish soldiers who raised him during WWII. Piotr Prendysz, a man who believes he has lost everything, and Wojciech Buko, a boy who still holds out hope, are thrown together when released from a Siberian gulag into a regiment bound for war. The starving Buko spends his last cigarettes on a helpless bear cub, then finds he cannot bring himself to eat it. From Siberia to Palestine to Monte Cassino to Scotland, the bear becomes the regiment’s mascot, its child, and the one thing holding these men together as grief, faith, and loyalty pull them apart.
WOJTEK’s lush, classical score is drawn from the melodies of Fryderyk Chopin including “The Heroic Polonaise,” “The Raindrop Prelude,” “The Minute Waltz,” and several beloved Nocturnes, with new lyrics and inventive arrangements by Benjamin Roberts.
Casting Breakdown.
Minimum Cast Size: 10 (3w, 7m)
Principals: 1w, 5m
Ensemble/Puppeteers: 2w, 2m (expandable)
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Wiry, with angular features. Despite his bitterness, bleak outlook, and rough edges, he is beautiful. Not quite charming, but endearing.
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Soft, bookish, and generally cheerful. He is energetic and relentlessly optimistic, with fiery, almost frightening determination in his eyes.
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No-nonsense, determined, and entirely self-sufficient. She knows what she wants and, usually, how to get it.
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Broad-shouldered, muscular, bearded. He is driven by a strong and sincere sense of duty, and protects those around him.
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Mouse-like, usually silent (mute for most of the play), but with wise expressive eyes. Plays as young as 16.
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Large mustache. Scottish Army Captain with a flexible relationship to rules and regulations. Fun-loving, kind, alcoholic. Ventriloquism required.
Puppets?
The real world of Wojtek the bear was beyond belief, and so is his representation onstage. In WOJTEK, ensemble characters, soldiers, a singing parrot, and of course, the bear all come alive through puppetry! Principal characters (portrayed without puppetry) will navigate a world filled with massive, deadly serious, and eerily life-like works of art, all with an Eastern European flare.
More War Horse than Milky White.
by The Walk Productions
by The Royal de Luxe
Creative Team.
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Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849) was born to middle-class French parents in Poland, he published his first composition at age seven and began performing in aristocratic salons at eight. He moved to Paris in 1831, and his first Paris concert the next year thrust him into the realm of celebrity. Renowned as a piano teacher, he spent his time in the highest society. He contracted tuberculosis apparently in the 1830s. In 1837 he began a 10-year liaison with the writer George Sand; she left him in 1847, and a rapid decline led to his death two years later.
Chopin stands not only as Poland’s greatest composer but perhaps as the most significant composer in the history of the piano; he exhaustively exploited the instrument’s capacities for charm, excitement, variety, and timbral beauty. His innovations in fingering, his use of the pedals, and his general treatment of the keyboard were hightly influential. Apart from two piano concertos (both 1830) and four other works for piano and orchestra, virtually all his compositions are for solo piano; they include some 60 mazurkas, 27 études, 26 preludes, 21 nocturnes, some 20 waltzes, 16 polonaises, 4 ballades, 4 scherzos, and 3 sonatas.
Biographical excerpt from Encyclopædia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/summary/Frederic-Chopin
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Benjamin Roberts is an award-winning American composer and orchestrator for musical theatre and the concert stage, regularly collaborating with Broadway's leading artists and professional wind ensembles around the globe.
His concert music and arrangements have been performed in more than a dozen countries across four continents. In 2021, he was commissioned to compose a fanfare for President Joe Biden, premiered for twenty heads of state at the APEC summit in San Francisco. He serves on active duty as a staff composer for United States Air Force Bands and received First Prize in the Erik Satie International Music Competition for his wind ensemble suite Judaean Exultations.
Roberts has provided theatrical orchestrations and arrangements for leading artists including Brian d’Arcy James, Jessie Mueller, Ethan Slater, Heather Headley, Jennifer Holliday, and JJ Niemann. The Chicago Tribune has noted his “singular orchestrations” for Jeff Award–winning productions at the Marriott Theatre.
In addition to WOJTEK, he has written two original musicals: Ferdinand (music, lyrics, co-book, with Jordan Goodsell) and Tomás and the Library Lady (music, with José Cruz González). He has developed over a dozen new works for the musical theatre with Northwestern University and Impact Arts in Austin, TX.
Roberts holds a Bachelor of Music from Northwestern University and is based between Tokyo and Austin.
Fryderyk Chopin
Wojtek’s Legacy.
Today, there are sculptures, statues, and monuments of Wojtek in over a dozen cities across Poland, Italy, England, Scotland, and Whales. He has become a symbol for enduring Polish solidarity and international fraternity known the world over.
Wojtek Soldier Bear Memorial
Edinburgh, Scotland
Would you like to help keep Wojtek’s story alive? Contact Benjamin Roberts at info@BenjaminRobertsMusic.com to learn how you can get involved!