If there was only one thing Natalia Kostrzewa wanted Mushroom to achieve it would be to show Irish people that not all immigrants from countries such as her native Poland are here for their jobs.

In fact, she herself is the quintessential cultural immigrant. Her father is a painter and he moved to Ireland first; she followed five years ago at the age of 17. But Natalia had been acting since she was 13 and last year, after honing her thespian skills – particularly vis-à-vis the English language – with a course in acting at the Gaiety School, she appeared in a short film called Siodme Pietro (Seventh Floor) directed by Przemyslaw Krawczyk (Poland) and a student film entitled A League Of Their Own by Kate Miller (Ireland.) Not only that, but Natalia performed in a ‘Monodrama’ called More Light, which she co-wrote with director Jerzy Lach. And its subject, as with Mushroom, is immigration. So, as a cultural immigrant, does Kostrzewa feel Ireland was the right place to move to?
“It’s hard to judge, but I definitely don’t regret coming here because I also am working in Poland, for example, in a play called Super-Market” she says. “And as well as premiering my one-woman show in Ireland I also did it in Poland, so I am juggling both countries, which is very good for me. But More Light was a kind of biography, and the director and I decided to take as much of it from my life as possible. But I also wanted to draw on the lives of people I know. Yet, what we didn’t do was make up any stories. Every part of it was true and that is what we wanted to get across to people.”
All of which led Natalia into Paul Meade’s play Mushroom, which, according to its Press release, ‘focuses on the lives of six young people, some Irish, some Polish and some Romanian’ and ‘delves into the parallel worlds of two young travellers as their everyday lives collide and interweave.’ Kostrzewa plays ‘Ewa’ around whom – along with ‘a young Irish man who finds himself in Bucharest trying to find some connection to his late Romanian mother’ – the tale revolves.
“Even though Ewa does come here looking for her father, she also comes after her husband who left her for an Irish girl, and she is determined top win him back,” Natalia explains, adding that this particular character obviously did marry young, at 19. “But when it comes to the parallels between Mushroom and More Light, the father figure in my play was very important too. Particularly in terms of their relationship, her longing to have that relationship in her life. And it’s the same in Mushroom, though the longing is more open, whereas in my one-woman show it’s more internal. And in Mushroom, I actually do meet my father. Yet what I love about this play is that it is good, especially for Irish people, to understand more what all this immigration is about. And to realise that we are not only coming here to work. We are longing, as well, for happiness, relationships, new lives basically.”
But does Natalia Kostrzewa believe that the basic view Irish people have of Polish immigrants is that they are coming here to take Irish jobs?
“I think it is a basic view of both Irish and Polish people,” she responds, categorically. “But, as this play shows there is far more to it, and that is not always the case. I am more interested in cultural immigrants, and it is nice to let Irish communities know this is part of the overall story of immigration too. That’s just one of the reasons I love working with the Storyteller’s Theatre Company on Mushroom and with the Storytellers Theatre Company in general. And I hope Irish people and Polish people and people of all nationalities come to see the play.”b

Mushroom gets its world premier at the Civic Theatre, Tallaght, Dublin and runs from June 5-9, and then tours nationwide.