Stefan Golaszewski Speaks About A Girl He Once Loved and Stefan Golaszewski Is A Widower are monologues published by The Invisible Dot on occasion of the author's show at the Bush Theatre in December 2009.



These are scripts for two plays performed by the writer himself. The first one is set in 1999 and features an 18-year-old Stefan and his brief but overwhelming encounter with a girl in a pub, followed by their first and only night together. The second play is set in 2056 and sees a 76-year-old widower Stefan looking back at his life together with his former wife.



Seen together the two stories might feel like counterparts, the thrill and hopes of a first love and the regrets and consequences of the last. To reinforce this, the plays were bound together through a technique called z-binding, where the books share the same back cover. That brings the two stories together yet keeps them as two separate entities. We also felt that despite being set in different moments in time, the book should not present a before and after, nor a start and end, so the object does not suggest any order for reading.



For the cover, we wanted a single image that could be used in both stories with different effects. This would amplify the message already suggested by the binding: these are two ends of the same experience. The idea of using flowers derived from this: they seem to be a perfect symbol for both love and death.



We chose a very classic image, Henri Fantin-Latour's White Roses (1875), but subverting the colour palette. The introduction of a bright colour scheme allowed us to create two different covers: a fluorescent red for his teenage love, and a darker and more still image to go with his recollections of his relationship.