She studied exhibition and stage design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, Poland under Jerzy and Lidia Skarżyński. She staterted her professional career in New York as an assistant to David Mitchell and a collaborator of Gordon Edelstein at the St. Marks Theater. She is the author of award-winning set and costume designs for around 150 productions. She has worked with: Paweł Miśkiewicz (Loher's Klaras Verhältnisse, Unschuld, Das letzte Feuer; Chekhov’s Platonov and Seagull, Canetti’s Auto da fé, Dobbrow's Alina Westwärts, Fosse’s Autumn Dream, Schimmelpfennig’s Before/After, Peer Gynt. Szkice z dramatu Henryka Ibsena after Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, Alice after Caroll, Jelinek’s The Merchant’s Contracts, Klub polski), Grzegorz Wiśniewski (Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman, Schwab’s Die Präsidentinnen, LaBute’s The Shape of Things, Witkiewicz’s The Mother, Gorky’s The Summergfolk, Badalucco/ Medioli/Visconti’s The Damned, Peter Turrini’s Josef und Maria, Dumas’s Queen Margot, Chekhov’s Platonov), Mikołaj Grabowski (Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Tango Gombrowicz after Gombrowicz, Mleczko & Radwan’s Opera mleczana, Wyspiański’s Liberation), Grzegorz Jarzyna (Witkiewicz’s Tropical Madness, Gombrowicz’s Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy, Fraser’s Unidentified Human Remains), Zbigniew Brzoza (Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Villqist’s Helver’s Night), as well as Zygmunt Hübner (Enquist’s From the Life of Rain Worms, Harwood’s The Dresser, Euripides’s Medea), Tadeusz Łomnicki (Pasolini’s Affabulazione), Wojciech Misiuro (Dantończycy, ZUN), Eugeniusz Korin (Allen’s Central Park West, Chechow żartuje!), Maja Kleczewska (Harrower’s Knives in Hens), Maciej Podstawny (Pakuła’s Don Kiszot, Krety i rajskie ptaki after Różewicz) abd Paweł Łysak (Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Tretyakov’s Roar China!).
Her costume design for Różewicz’s Trap started her long-standing collaboration with Jerzy Grzegorzewski. At the Studio Theatre in Warsaw and the Stary Theatre in Kraków the pair staged the following production together: Powolne ciemnienie malowideł after Lowry’s Under the Volcano, Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, Tak zwana ludzkość w obłędzie after Witkiewicz, Usta milczą, dusza śpiewa after Kálman's and Lehár’s operettas, Dziesięć portretów z czajką w tle after Chekhov, La Bohème after Wyspiański, Dziady – dwanaście improwizacji after Mickiewicz and Molière’s Don Juan.
Since 1998 she has been a designer with the National Theatre in Warsaw, where she has also collaborated with Mr Grzegorzewski (set designs: Gombrowicz’s The Marriage and Operetta, Grzegorzewski’s Halka Spinoza, Wyspiański’s The Judges; costumes: Wyspiański’s The Wedding, Shakespeare’s The Midsummer Night’s Dream, Auden’s The See and The Mirror, Wyspiański’s Hamlet, Duszyczka after Różewicz, On. Drugi Powrót Odysa by the Grzegorzewskis). She has also devised stage designs for Tadeusz Bradecki's productions of Saragossa after Potocki, and Gombrowicz’s Operetta; Agnieszka Lipiec-Wróblewska’s production of Old Times by Pinter, and Dublin Carol by McPherson; Jan Englert’s staging of The Annuity and Maidens’ Vows by Fredro, Levin’s The Labor of Life, Księżniczka na opak wywrócona after Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Fredraszki after Fredro, and Słowacki’s Kordian; Antonina Grzegorzewska's Iphigenia; Michał Kotański’s stagings of Dzieje grzechu by Żeromski, Barbara Wysocka’s productions of Knapik’s Moby Dick, Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, and Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Ms Hanicka’s has also designed for the Wybrzeże Theatre in Gdańsk, the Dramatyczny in Warsaw, and the Polski in Bydgoszcz.
She has published the a book for young people titled Ale teatr! She teaches at the AST National Academy of Theatre Arts.
(photo: A. Georgiew / Artistic Archives of the National Theatre, Warsaw)
