Beata Guczalska: Sculptor of Meanings
Beata Guczalska examines the documentary film recordings of Jerzy Jarocki’s rehearsals for some of his most outstanding productions: The Wedding at the Stary Theatre (prem: 20 IV 1990), The Trap and Käthchen of Heilbronn at the Polski Theatre in Wrocław (prem: 30 V 1992; 30 XI 1994). The author describes the varied methods that enabled Jarocki, via an everyday exchange of opinions or the simple act of walking across the stage, to incorporate a manifesto for the philosophy of life, hidden obsessions and the determination of the characters. Jarocki, when working with an actor, would offer fresh hints and strove to fill out and deepen the stage message, while the actor attempted to filter these hints and prescriptions through his own psychophysical apparatus and transform them into the language of physical signs. Guczalska describes Jarocki’s relationship with an actor as an alchemical tandem: one party throws in the ingredients, while the other skilfully welds them into a new precious metal.
Maryla Zielińska: Reminiscing on Reminiscences
Maryla Zielińska, in her introduction to her interviews with Jerzy Jarocki, draws attention to Jarocki’s ambivalent attitude to personal reminiscences. The director, who was eagerly engaged in the documentation of the living-through-writing of other artists, has not left much evidence about his own activities.
I am constantly following and scrutinising you. Maryla Zielińska talks to Jerzy Jarocki
A previously unpublished conversation held during work on Grzebanie (Digging) – a production seamlessly combining the life and oeuvre of S. I. Witkiewicz. Jerzy Jarocki speaks of his fascination, which lasted almost all of his life, with this writer’s output and about successive rehearsals for stagings of Witkiewicz plays, in which he was attempting to combine his political spirit with an anti-naturalistic aesthetic premise. He also talks about the influence various facts revealed from Witkiewicz’s life had on his way of viewing and interpreting his oeuvre.
Writing a country’s history through the act of creation. Maryla Zielińska talks to Jerzy Jarocki
In a discussion which took place after the play Mrożek’s History of the PRL, Jerzy Jarocki talks of his fascination, stretching back many years, with the oeuvre of a writer living in exile from 1963. He notes that Mróżek managed to grasp from a distance the mechanisms dictating social and political life in People’s Poland. Jarocki also talks of his own attitude to the PRL (the People’s Republic of Poland), his coming of age in post-war Poland and his departure for and stay in Moscow, where he studied directing.
Anna Stafiej: What is in a “Węzłowisko”?
Anna Stafiej’s reflections on Węzłowisko – the script for the last play being worked on by Jerzy Jarocki. The author outlines, in short episodes, the assumptions behind a production which was supposed to take place at the National Theatre, Warsaw. The script breaks off with the sentence that an ending still needed to be invented – yet, without Jerzy Jarocki, it is impossible to complete it. Węzłowisko will therefore pass into theatre history as an unfinished project.
Glosses for “Węzłowiska”. Anna Stafiej talks to Stanisław Radwan
Anna Stafiej’s talk with Stanisław Radwan relates to the script for Jerzy Jarocki’s Węzłowisko. The composer talks about the minutiae of work on the text – from the initial gathering of material, through character construction and the composing of episodes to details relating to scenography and the allocation of parts to the actors. In Radwan’s view, Węzłowisko will not be adapted for the stage. The script has not been polished and lacks an ending – this could only be added by the author. Jarocki intended to do this, but not until rehearsal stage with the actors at the National Theatre.
Anna R. Burzyńska:With an Art – for a Moment
Anna R. Burzyńska writes about key plays in Jerzy Jarocki’s oeuvre with which he took his leave of his favourite writers: Gombrowicz, Różewicz and Mrożek. In the unused script for Węzłowisko, the director’s personal preferences are clear in his choice of protagonists. In addition to Meyerhold, Stanisławski, Majakowski, Malewicz, Żeromski, Osterwa and Limanowski, Jarocki also settles his accounts with Witkacy.
Małgorzata Dziewulska: Concealed / Discovered. Memory Games in the Promised Theatre
Małgorzata Dziewulska investigates promotional strategies employed by theatres and the media discourse accompanying two premieres separated from each other by time: Jerzy Jarocki’s Dream of a Guiltless One from 1979 and Krzysztof Karlikowski’s (A)pollonia from 2009. Jarocki declared his production to be “about the regaining of independence”, while Warlikowski declared his to be a “national mystery play”, which led to a dichotomy between public expectations and the actual form and theme of the play, influencing the content of reviews and ultimately – quite possibly – the play itself as well.
Krystyna Duniec, Joanna Krakowska: Soc, Sex and Historia
The article title refers to the sphere of power, conflict and antagonism which has politicized literature, theatre and the visual arts. The authors are interested in the extent to which the political dimension of “soc” and “sex” and historical policy in art are capable of influencing reality and transforming social consciousness. In their view, this individualistic trend initiated in theatre “of the other sort” turned out to be the most radical strategy: “Political potential thus continues to lurk in the favouring of individual subjectivity”.
Grzegorz Niziołek: Resentment as an Experiment
The author analyses the notion of resentment – previously regarded negatively and burdened with normalizing and excluding potential – and proposes that it be viewed from another perspective. Niziołek contrasts the amnesiacal play, as pursued by Warlikowski in Cleansed or Lupa in Factory 2, with plays sensitive to social layers of memory – e.g. the productions of Grzegorzewski or Klata as well as the following contemporary Polish plays: Masłowska’s It’s Good Between Us, Stasiuk’s Night, Paweł Demirski’s A Play for a Child and Long Live the War!!! and Bożena Umińska-Keff’s A Piece about Mother and the Homeland. He proves that resentment is a genuine creative force in theatre.
Joanna Wichowska: A Master Welcomes Us to a Confessional
In her review of City of Dream, directed by Krystian Lupa (Variety Theatre, Warsaw, prem: 10 XI 2012), Joanna Wichowska claims that the director is returning to a motif familiar from other productions – a Utopian peripheral territory. Due to the “incurable egotists whose thoughts and experiences are […] untranslatable into any known familiar habitual language” inhabiting the theatre world, the play slides into an abyss of solipsism. The irritation this caused the spectators was partially intended and thematicised in the production: the author perceives the play’s self-depreciatory force, which resonates most emphatically in the finale.
Arkadina from Arcadia. Joanna Targoń talks to Maria Maj
A conversation with the actor Maria Maj about her work on the staging of City of Dream, directed by Krystian Lupa. Maj speaks about the successive stages of her unusual cooperation with Lupa; while she refers enthusiastically to the initial rehearsal stages – the conversations, improvisations and screen shots – she speaks with detachment about the process of bringing the play to a close and formulating a director’s statement. Maj, who acted for Krystian Lupa at the beginning of his career, compares working with Lupa thirty years ago and today.
Wardel. Waldemar Wasztyl talks to Iga Gańczarczyk
Iga Gańczarczyk talks about her work as a playwright during rehearsals for City of Dream, directed by Krystian Lupa. She speaks about the idea, which never reached fruition, of creating two versions of the production – for Warsaw and Kraków – and reveals which of the improvisations and personal relationships formed between actors were included in the final version of the production. Gańczaryk returns to the beginning of the rehearsals, speaking of the first ideas and the direction taken by experiments, which were often abandoned at a later stage. She also comments on the political dimension, psychoanalytical strands and the relationships between the spectators and actors in this production.
Kazimierz Bardzik: A Few Thoughts on “City of Dream”
Kazimierz Bardzik, a spectator during Lupa’s first productions, shares his recollections of Krystian Lupa’s first realization of City of Dream (Stary Theatre, premiere: 1985). He recalls this production as an absorbing metaphysical ritual whose emotional excitement and altering of the rhythm of life not only gripped the actors but also the audience.
Florian Malzacher: With Complete Friendship. Curating in the Performative Arts
The author attempts to qualify the notion of “art curator”: he sketches its history within the plastic arts, passing on to the issue of the curator’s role in the performative arts, while drawing attention to its flexible status, which arises from the specific qualities of theatre and dance. He also offers to respond to the question of the current nature of its status and what working with it actually entails, for example during the construction of programmes for theatre festivals. He highlights how important it is to contextualize performative works and writes about the problems and dangers that are bound up with this. While drawing attention to the importance of the role fulfilled by the programme designers on the theatre market who dictate the visibility of individual artists (“to curate” – he writes – “means to exclude”), the author does not omit economic and moral issues.
This is not an avant-garde dream. Piotr Kosiewski talks to Artur Żmijewski
This interview with Artur Żmijewski relates to his curatorial conception for this year’s Berlin Biennale. The artist speaks about various projects, answers the charges levelled at him by critics and talks about the social policy mechanisms implicit in the curator’s work. Żmijewski’s intention was to employ an art strategy and his position as curator to attain political ends. The artist declares his “radical loyalty toward the [thus conceived] Biennale concept”, which dictated the exclusion of certain works from the review.
Time to get out of the city. Tomasz Kowalski talks to Agata Siwiak
Agata Siwiak, in conversation with Tomasz Kowalski, talks in detail about her Wielkopolska: Revolutions project, which involved artists working with local communities in the region. The project was underpinned by a conviction about the power of art to transform social microhistories and bring to the light of day various microrevolutions that are imperceptible from the outside yet are immensely important for local communities. As Siwiak says, her role in this project involved utilising the energy of people living outside large urban centres, which is ignored by local curators, for they are unaware of its existence.
Agata Łuksza: About Them//About Themselves
The author describes the concept behind the RE//MIX series realized by the komuna//warszawa theatre. This project involves contemporary artists staging performances in which they reinterpret the oeuvre or particular works of theatre and dance artists, which are incorporated into the framework of a “canon” created (and continuously expanded) to meet the needs of the series. Evoking Lawrence Lessig’s viewpoint, Łuksza argues that the RE//MIXES are works that complement the original, contributing to the assumption of postdramatic theatre. Upon examining the performances staged in this series, the author claims that the project’s premise is most fully realized by the performance of Ramona Nagabczyńska, who settles her accounts with icon of postmodern dance – Trisha Brown.
Katarzyna Fazan: Asian Investments: Bull and Bear Markets
The curator of this year’s Malta Festival Idiom – Akcje Azjatyckie /Asian Investments (Poznań, 3-7 VII 2012) – was Stefan Kaegi, the creator of Rimini Protokoll. The artists he invited and their performances polemicized against cultural stereotypes and forces of habit, proposing an alternative viewpoint on Asia. The consistent and coherent programme also urged viewers to revise their notion of the festival as an event presenting atomized autonomic performances. Out of the invited productions, the author singles out Ant Hampton’s Elsewhere, Offshore. Part 1: Cue China, Wojtek Ziemilski’s Pokrewni and Rimini Protokoll’s Bodenprobe Kasachstan.
Agata Adamiecka-Sitek: Grotowski, Women and Homosexuals
The author analyses Jerzy Grotowski’s production Apocalypsis cum figuris (Teatr Laboratorium, Wrocław, premiere of first version: 19 VII 1968) within the context of the gender struggle. In defiance of the canonic interpretations, Adamiecka-Sitek analyses femininity and masculinity in Grotowski’s work, revealing a kind of dramatization of the misogynistic discourse of psychoanalysis as well as male homosexuality and a species of mystical eroticism.
Gabriela Karolczak: Choreographing Empathy and Mirror Neurons
Gabriela Karolczak, on emerging from her reflections on Susan Leigh Foster’s book Choreographying Empathy, attempts to examine the theory and possibilities open to dance performances using concepts developed by neurobiology and cognitive science. She shows how the mirror neuron mechanism can aid the creation of a common space between performers and spectators; this theory, when employed in dance, aids the development of mechanisms which should activate the same regions of both sides of the cerebral cortex.
Michał Krawczak: Programming Interaction: Software and the Performative Arts
The author describes the common link between performance art and new media technology, especially digital and virtual techniques. The author calls the coupling of these technologies with art as “performance software” and defines it as programming that interactively participates in a work of art’s creation. Thanks to this new and progressively interactive innovative relationship between art and new media, a unique audience experience is coming into being, created by an artist-work-recipient relationship that differs from anything that has come before.
Aleksandra Kamińska: The Resurrection of Memory
The Hotel Savoy, a production based on Joseph Roth’s novel, which was directed by Michał Zadara at the Nowy Theatre in Łódź and premiered (15 X 2012) during this year’s Łódż of Four Cultures 2012 – Generations Festival, forms part of an interdisciplinary project devoted to Roth. The production’s point of departure was the novel’s motto: “The Hotel «Savoy» was like a world”. Taking place within the whole space of a historical hotel, the performance is a site specific piece in which every spectator, equipped with a map, plots his/her own route. In the finale, however the hotel happening turns into a kind of Dziady (ancestral spirit) ritual, connecting viewers with a bygone era and the people dwelling in it.
Olga Katafiasz: Tamed Cruelty
Titus Andronicus is a co-production between the Polski Theatre, Wrocław (prem: 15 IX 2012) and Staatsschauspiel in Dresden (prem: 28 IX 2012), hence the evident game of Polish-German stereotypes. According to Katafiasz, the theatrical symbols used here by Klata are simple and occasionally empty, for the director fails to challenge the stereotypes which he employs. There is also a lack of genuine conflict, which would lend meaning to the performance.
Jakub Papuczys: The Railways Are Going To Pot (And We Couldn’t Care Less)
Papuczys, in his review of Monika Strzępka and Paweł Demirski’s latest production, The Firm, realized at the Nowy Theatre, Poznań (prem: 6 X 2010), notes that its creators aim sharp criticism not only at the action mechanisms of the authorities, which have led to the gradual collapse of PKP (Polish State Railways), but also at ordinary people travelling by train: our attention is therefore directed at the deeply-rooted discrete actions of individuals, which provide a convenient justification for social passivity. Unfortunately these ideas are submerged in a schematic and monotonous tale relating the history of the people managing the railways.
Piotr Dobrowolski: Girl Power
The author notes that Antonina Grzegorzewska’s main aim, when staging here own text Tauryda. Apartado 679 (Contemporary Theatre, Szczecin, prem: 12 X 2012), is not so much to stand up to the ancient myth as to force its potential to submit to the power of the individual trials and experiences of the title protagonist. The performance first and foremost relates her attempts at learning to live without family support, while attaining a sense of detachment toward the past and respect for herself as an ordinary harmed and rejected woman who willingly loses herself in her dreams of marriage and motherhood.
Aleksandra Wiśniewska: Academy of Insurrection
The author reviews a performance – Uprising (prem: 1 VIII 2012 at the Warsaw Uprising Museum; 1 X 2012 at the Dramatyczny Theatre) – directed by Radosław Rychcik and produced for the anniversary of the outbreak of the uprising in accordance with the Museum’s tradition. The director presents the uprising from the perspective of young people who draw their knowledge of it from processed pop culture or the clichéd version presented at schools. However it is difficult for the creators to significantly diverge from this simplified picture.
Joanna Jopek: Dumanowski Soundsystem – Polish Drama
A radio project realised by Jan Klata on Independence Day at Radio Kraków entailing a staging of the audio sphere focused on the phenomenon of the voice. The script, which is based on Wit Szostak’s novel Dumanowski, revolves around a sensationally discovered distorted recording of a speech by Marshall Piłsudski, in which he orders the memory of Józafat Dumanowski, a currently unknown figure, to be preserved. The story, which is incorporated into a radio programme featuring invited guests and breaks for news and weather forecasts, is enclosed within a casket form in which fiction collides with reality in such a way that they undermine each other.
Agnieszka Marszałek: The Key to Manon
Mariusz Treliński, when directing Giacomo Puccini’s Manon Lescaut (Grand Theatre – National Opera, premiere: 25 X 2012), transfers the action to a metro station, or maybe a local rail network. Dressed in impeccable black suits, the protagonists ideally embody the contemporary human being: they have everything calculated in advance, move like programmed automatons and are incapable of displaying any deeper feelings or emotions. Agnieszka Marszałek, in her review, ponders who the title protagonist – according to Treliński’s intention – is meant to be within this environment, since Manon repeatedly discards the mask imposed by the environment, orchestrating an ingenious game.
Katarzyna Lemańska: A Festival Underscored by Muteness
Katarzyna Lemańska reviews two performances presented during Foreign Affairs – a new festival organised within the framework of Berliner Festspiele. The first of these is a project by the Belgian collective, FC Bergman. In 300 el x 50 el x 30 el (prem: 28 I 2011), not a word is uttered, the main vehicle of artistic expression being the image – both theatrical and filmed. In the author’s view, the most interesting dance performance at the festival was Enfant, choreographed by Boris Charmatz (prem: 7 VII 2011). The creators of this performance for “twenty-six children, nine dancers and three machines” take up the theme of the objectivization of human beings (both children and adults) – and the reduction of their corporeality to the functions of a machine.
Katarzyna Targońska: How Individuality Matures into Freedom
The author briefly presents Kirill Serebrennikov, a pupil of Anatoly Vasiliev, before going on to discuss a production he staged at the National Theatre in Riga - Woyzeck/Voiceks (premiere: 10 IV 2012). The director in his characteristically unconventional manner presents a classic of world drama. This time, he portrays the struggle for a right to a personality and individualism waged by the title protagonist in Büchner’s play.
Tadeusz Kornaś: Theatre in a Quest for Truth (I)
Tadeusz Kornaś acquaints the reader with the concept behind the International “World as a Place of Truth. The Season of Masters” Festival organised by the Jerzy Grotowski Institute in Wrocław (8 X – 19 XII 2012). The author analyses two events in detail. The first of these is Mauzer, which is based on a text by Heiner Müller and directed by his student – Theodoros Terzopoulos – and examines the position of contemporary tragedy (premiere: 9 X 2012). The second was composed of laboratory exercises – Pirandello. Vaccination – led by Anatoly Vasiliev (presentations: 25,27 X 2012). These exercises involved the creation of etudes which, by constructing precise improvisations on a Pirandello play, served as a vehicle in the quest for theatrical truth.
Łukasz Zatorski: Manifesto for the Instant Utopianisation of Life
A report from the 37th edition of Kraków Theatrical Reminiscences (5-11 X 2012), which took place under the motto: The City of the Future: The Masses – The Machine – The Dream. In Zatorski’s view, the festival curator, Annie Lewanowicz, successfully realized an avant-garde project operating on the boundary between the hyle and bios of art. The participants, mobilised into taking part in events occurring in the urban space, became elements in a network described by Bruno Latour. The festival turned out to be a success – the socially engaged performances clearly arose in the consciousnesses of the Kraków spectators.
Magdalena Talar: Fictional Worlds
The author describes the productions of three directors represented at this year’s Avignon Theatre Festival (7-28 VII 2012): William Kentridge’s Refuse the Hour (prem.: 18 VI 2012 Holland Festival in Amsterdam), Christoph Marthaler’s Meine faire Dame (Theater Basel, prem.: 12 XI 2010) and Simon McBurney’s The Master and Margarita (Complicite, prem.: 15 XII 2011). All three artists passed through Paris’ Jacques Lecoq International Theatre School, and their output reveals what diverse paths may be followed by its students. The common thread in their work appears to be the treatment of acting and theatre as acts of fun which really can uncover and unmask the constructed nature of time, language or reality.
Katarzyna Lemańska: Theatre is the Only Place in Which the Truth Can Be Uttered to Your Face
The task of the creator of the programme for the XVI Shakespeare Festival in Gdańsk (27 VII – 5 VIII 2012) entailed striking a compromise between diversity and standard of performance. Festival favourites included: Luke Perceval’s Hamlet and Silvu Purcărete’s The Tempest, as well as the festival’s dark horse, Konstantin Bogomolov’s Lear. A Comedy. The Russian director not only demystified the national myth of The Great Patriotic War, but also profaned the myth of the theatre-as-temple, which sparked off a great deal of opposition from Russian audiences. In Poland, the performance also triggered a great deal of debate.
Anna R. Burzyńska: Utopia as a Plan of Action
The dance centre in Düsseldorf described by the author – tanzhaus nrw – is a cauldron for dancing talent. It is a meeting point for both amateurs and professionals. This non-profit organisation bases its activity around four varied programmes aimed at the general public. This year’s presentation of contemporary Polish dance (22 V – 2 VI 2012) reveals the gulf between Polish and German accomplishments in this field. However, demonstrations of shows by Harakiri Farmers and Agata Maszkiewicz inspired hope.
Jadwiga Majewska: Looking into the Viewer’s Eyes
Jadwiga Majewska thinks that the leitmotif of this year’s edition of Old Brewery New Dance in Malta (Poznań, 3-8 VII 2012) was focused on diverse artistic actions concentrated around the notion of bodily perception. While the western manner of thinking urges us to comprehend visual perception as being experienced by a recipient, the diverse artistic projects presented at the festival aimed to reverse this model. The artists wished to wrench the spectator away from the traditional position of observer and encourage him to reflect on what was going on with his emotions and bodily experiences while participating in the performance.
Michał Lachman: Word Menagerie
The author, in his review of the first Polish anthology of Tennessee Williams plays: A Streetcar Named Desire and Other Plays (Kraków 2012), draws attention to the belated appreciation in Poland for this author’s output. Lachman’s text somewhat makes up for the fact that this volume lacks a critical introduction to William’s works. He penetratingly analyses the translation of the plays completed by Jacek Poniedziałek, who has managed to capture their stage resonance by adapting the language to the Polish spectator’s cognitive horizon, so this translation may be labelled as generational.
Dorota Jarząbek-Wasyl: A History of Theatre That Is Unfamiliar to Us
A review of Marek Waszkiel’s book A History of Puppet Theatre in Poland 1944-2000 (Warszawa 2012). The author sees at least three potential reading strategies. The first one follows the chapter chronology – this is a historical outline of post-war puppetry in Poland, which – interestingly – is heavily embroiled in history and politics. The second approaches the bare facts, the chronology, i.e. the reorganisation of the material from the first part in point form. The third strategy permits the reader to follow the trail left by the rich illustrative material. |