The fairy tale is a story about a tsar from the city of ceramics who likes making empty jugs and arranging them evenly on a shelf so that they do not stand out in any way and serve him. The Sun itself decided to interfere with this routine work. And, as a joke, every time the tsar began shaping his empty jugs, the Sun made a rainbow appear on them.
The fairy tale by Grażyna Hanaf, a journalist for istotne.pl and an author of children’s fairy tales, will reveal how the tsar and tsarina dealt with making jugs and the mischievous Sun.
We will distribute the fairy tale on Friday during the opening of the Ceramic Festival at 6:00 p.m. in the Market Square.
– Following the events during the 2024 jubilee Ceramic Festival, when the president, together with the head of the Ceramic Brotherhood, Jarosław Rutyna, excluded people of minority sexual orientation from the ceramic parade, calling them an “ideology,” I decided to express my protest in a creative way – says the author of the fairy tale, Grażyna Hanaf. – Piotr Roman, the president of Bolesławiec since 2002, is nicknamed the tsar, while his spokesperson and head of election campaigns, Agnieszka Gergont, is called the tsarina. The unusual nicknames of this pair are used in the public sphere. That is how the heroes of this fairy tale came into being: the tsar and the tsarina. The head of the brotherhood did not deserve to become a character, but the word “routine,” which appears in the description of the tsar’s work, is not accidental, and the audience will surely draw the rest of the parallels themselves – the author adds.
In 2024, while handing the keys to the city to Jarosław Rutyna, the elder of the Ceramic Brotherhood, Piotr Roman chased a group from the LGBT community away from in front of the stage. The group had come to the opening of the 30th Ceramic Festival with a banner reading, “We are all made of the same clay.” The president has never apologized for his behavior.
– I am an ally of LGBT people, and I decided that a fairy tale would be a wonderful way to create political satire and describe simply what happened in Bolesławiec a year ago – says the journalist. – We published the fairy tale and will distribute it during the festival. In our view, it is an elegant form of protest against people who made exclusion the guiding theme of such a beautiful festival. What is more, they still hypocritically claim that they are doing this solely because they oppose politicking during the Ceramic Festival. I wanted to remind the fairy-tale tsar that he has always engaged in politics during every Ceramic Festival, secular and church fairs, and every city festival, and I do not think he intends to stop. This is how he wins voters for his political option. It is also true that the president’s politicking on every occasion bothers neither him nor the other empty jugs that he routinely places on his own shelf so that they serve him – Hanaf adds.