Frida: A Collector from Szczecin’s Westend

We are pleased to invite you to another spectacle produced by the Lentz Villa! Frida: A Collector from Westend, directed by Arkadiusz Buszko, gives our audience a unique opportunity to return to pre-war Szczecin (Stettin), learn the story of our villa and its inhabitant – a German art lover. The premiere comes on 1st April 2023.

The purchase of the Lentz Villa by Wilhelm Doering in November 1911 opened a new chapter in the building’s history. The new owner modernised its interiors, put in a modern bathroom, installed central heating, and, most intriguingly, decided to add a strongroom in the basement.

In 1935 Wilhelm’s widow Frida Doering first leased and later sold the villa to the city. Few people knew that this wife of a cereal merchant and the last private owner of what was then 84 Falkenwalder Straße (now 84 Wojska Polskiego Avenue), a well-mannered German townswoman, was also a sophisticated art collector – a passion she shared with her husband. The Doerings filled the villa’s luxurious interiors with works of art: paintings, drawings, and sculptures. The most valuable of them were protected in the specially designed ‘sanctuary’, that is, the already mentioned strongroom under the villa.

The Doering couple was by no means as traditional as one might expect. These members of the German bourgeoisie demonstrated a truly unbridled love and passion for art. Their refined collection included excellent and exceedingly rare works, for instance by Rembrandt, but also paintings, sculptures, and drawings by German artists of the late 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. Thanks to their generosity, valuable paintings were obtained by the city museum (Museum der Stadt Stettin).

The spectacle by Olga Adamska shows Frida Doering’s lyrical side, her love of beauty and art. In the last moments she spent in her beloved villa in Szczecin’s Westend, she recalls memories and images – those precious ones, hanging in frames or hidden away in the strongroom, but also those even more precious ones which life imprinted in her soul.

Let the atmosphere of that very final evening at the Lentz Villa and Frida’s tale carry us away, back to those times. It was an age that came to an end, and the paintings got scattered throughout the world, but, for a brief moment, we may imagine that they are still here…

Script: Anna Ołów-Wachowicz

Directed by: Arkadiusz Buszko

Stage design: Katarzyna Banucha

Cast: Olga Adamska and Felipe Alonso Céspedes Sànchez

as well as Joanna Kraszewska (cellist)

Tickets: 60-80 zł www.bilety.willa-lentza.pl