English (UK) 
Biography
Sylwana Skarżyńska’s first name carries a Polish lineage of wildness: derived from the Latin silva (‘wood’), echoing the Roman woodland god Silvanus and a life lived close to the untamed. That pull toward myth, culture, and ritual led her first to ideas, then to the stage.
She earned a Bachelor’s in Culture Studies, writing her thesis “Seducing as a Social Game” through the lenses of Eric Berne and Erving Goffman. Exploring dramaturgy, she treated everyday life as theatre shaped by time, place and audience, where we wear masks and perform for one another. From that vantage, Sylwana examined the archetypes of Don Juan and the Femme Fatale and tracked how they reappear in the age of online dating.
Hungry to move from theory to embodiment, Sylwana completed a Master of Arts in Dramatic Acting. Her thesis “Studium about Lady Macbeth” opened with a wink to the role’s magnetic pull—'…oh, that Lady Macbeth that all the actresses from the dramatic trend want to portray’—announcing her fascination with power, conscience, and transformation.
On stage, she debuted as Queen Margot and, after relocating to Australia, took on the sinuous menace of Kaa in “The Jungle Book”. Sylwana made her first big-screen appearance in the 3D comedy “Kac Wawa” (2011). Artistically, she orbits closer to Stanislavski than Brecht, while remaining porous to experiment; she has also explored Grotowski’s rigor and ancient theatre during workshops in Gardziennice.
She’s appeared in feature films “Kac Wawa” (as Jessica); “Król życia (as a Sister of Mercy); “Amok” (as Sonia); and in the TV series “Rojst (The Mire)” as Hotel Receptionist.
Sylwana’s overall compass has pointed toward roles of raw interior ‘weather-women’ whose souls crack the surface. Influences—or dream touchstones—include Jenny Isaksson in Ingmar Bergman’s “Face to Face”; the enigmatic actress of “Persona”; Cabiria in Fellini’s “Nights of Cabiria”; and Bess McNeill in “Breaking the Waves”. Whether in classroom, rehearsal room, or under the lights, she chases the same thing: the moment when the mask slips and a living human being looks back.
