Monika Świerkosz. The (Only) Such Place on Earth
Monika Świerkosz reviews the play Paradiso directed by Michał Borczuch (Łaźnia Nowa Theater, premiere: 21.06.2014), using professional actors and people with autism. The critic points out that Borczuch's performance apprehends autism as a different way of perceiving reality. This is largely achieved through a brilliant use of the last part of Dante's Divine Comedy – "Paradise." Świerkosz notes a similarity between the form of the epic poem and the way in which people with autism verbalize phenomena. She also highly rates the work of the professional actors and the wards of the Life Farm center, as well as the stage design and the aesthetic concept of the whole.
Illuminating the Inconceivable: Katarzyna Waligóra speaks with Michał Borczuch
This conversation about the production of Paradiso (Łaźnia Nowa Theater, premiere: 21.06.2014) focuses on Borczuch's collaboration with people from Life Farm for this project. The director speaks of a change in approach to people with autism, aiming to treat them like fully-fledged co-creators of the play. This premise demanded that the professional actors adopt a different sort of sensitivity toward their partners on stage. The first confrontations with audiences during the January performances had a decisive effect on both the dynamics of this relationship and for the whole project. An essential factor determining the form of the production was the literary material, i.e. Dante's "Paradise."
Monika Kwaśniewska. Come with Us!
A review of Iga Gańczarczyk's play Clearly You Have Never Been a 13-Year-Old Girl, Sir (Łaźnia Nowa Theater, premiere: 19.07.2014), made with girls aged eight to thirteen in the framework of the "Summer in the Theater" project. Kwaśniewska highly appreciates the fact that the performance is mainly based on the stories, abilities, and sensibilities of the participants: "Some speak of their experiences, others dance, still others play percussion and sing or enact overblown scenes about their past and present stereotypes concerning the upbringing and duties of little girls." Their performances are all situated within a precise theatrical structure, however, which makes the play very successful in artistic terms.
There's No Theater for Us: Marta Bryś Speaks with Iga Gańczarczyk
In conversation with Marta Bryś, Iga Gańczarczyk speaks of working on two plays using children: Piccolo Coro dell’Europa (premiere: 19.07.2013) and Clearly You Have Never Been a 13-Year-Old Girl, Sir(premiere: 19.07.2014), produced at Krakow's Łaźnia Nowa Theater. The slowly evolving issues and forms of the performances and the script, which was constructed during the various rehearsals, allowed the director to take a less infantile approach to children's problems and their way of understanding the world. A "children's" theater thus conceived could be treated on the same level as other projects dealing with social issues.
Jakub Papuczys. "Que sera, sera…"
Jakub Papuczys reviews the Such a Young and Beautiful Boyproduction created as part of the Wielkopolska: Revolutions project by Jolanta Janiczak, Wiktor Rubin, and Cezary Tomaszewski at the Social Aid Home in Lisówki (premiere: 27, 28.06.2014). The author describes the first part of the show, based on Mickiewicz's Świtezianka. He found the next part more powerful, however, where the viewers strolled individually through the center in order to hear the stories in various parts of the home. Papuczys writes of the contrast between the residents of the Social Aid Home and the (predominantly young) viewers; as such, he states that participation in the performance acclimatizes the viewers to the subjects of old age, sickness, and death.
Final stop: Joanna Jopek speaks with Jolanta Janiczak and Wiktor Rubin
Joanna Jopek speaks with Jolanta Janiczak and Wiktor Rubin about their Such a Young and Beautiful Boy project, carried out with the inhabitants of the Social Aid Home in Lisówki (premiere: 27, 28.06.2014). This latest edition of the Wielkopolska: Revolutions project turned out to be a remarkably difficult undertaking. In recounting their experiences and problems working with people of advanced ages, the artists join Joanna Jopek in wondering at the form (and sense) of such a theater, which should provide a chance for people with little or no voice in social life to take the floor.
Stolen Past: Lukáš Jiřička speaks with Bojana Kunst
An interview with Bojana Kunst, a Slovenian performance studies and dance theater researcher. The interlocutors' main subject of interest is the category of the subversiveness of contemporary art (crossing the boundaries between art, life, and politics), for which performance has become the most effective medium. In the context of Kunst's piece, The Artist at Work, the subject of the artist's limited capacity to design the future comes up. The author points out that artists subscribe to the survival strategies imposed on them by capitalism. The interlocutors consider the democratic dimension of contemporary art, the processual nature of the work, and the latest participation strategies.
Joanna Krakowska. People: Penny Arcade and the New York Queer Scene
Joanna Krakowska takes a look at the history of American queer performance in terms of its political significance and formal transformations. The author perceives continuity in the development of the theater of sexual minorities, running from the New York underground theaters of the 1960s, for whom the most important means of communication was the word, and the most important strategy was to address shocking social themes and to give voice to their silenced protagonists. She also questions the current political potential of queer theater, when pop culture, bourgeois values, and entertaining professionalism are stripping the non-heterosexual identity of all its oddity on stage.
Katarzyna Fazan. The Ruin – Alternations of the Theatrical Image
Katarzyna Fazan's article addresses the topic of Polish theater set design seen as an image of ruins – a world of post-apocalyptic disintegration. Analyzing the set design of great 20th-century theater artists, such as Tadeusz Kantor, Józef Szajna, or Jerzy Grzegorzewski, the author performs an insightful analysis of contemporary set designers and directors, including Krystian Lupa, Justyna Łagowska, and Małgorzata Szczęśniak. The text uses the theoretical work of Jean Starobinski and Walter Benjamin to show the transformation of images on stage, which were initially replicas of post-war ruins, and later became ruins in themselves, showing the detritus of modern times.
Włodzimierz Szturc. Krystian Lupa: Set Design – A Philosophy of the Theater Space
Włodzimierz Szturc insightfully analyzes the directorial accomplishments of Krystian Lupa in terms of his view of the world, his visual and metaphysical sensitivity. At the same time, he tries to sketch out a directive in Lupa's way of thinking about theater as a coherent philosophical work whose contents are expressed through various plays, projects, texts, and drawings. Szturc identifies the artist's consciousness with a shared ontology of the various plays, constructed through the set design: "magic objects” – fetishes, the recurring motif of the labyrinth, the frames and windows coming together to make a dynamic pictorial presentation of the artist's idea, through which, from the point of view of the Aristotelian ópseos kósmos there could be a way of expressing the philosophy of Lupa's work as a whole.
Marcin Kościelniak. Man and (His) Things
Marcin Kościelniak traces a motif in the theater that has recurred since the 1960s (Tadeusz Kantor), through the 1970s (Akademia Ruchu, Helmut Kajzar, Jerzy Jarocki), to the present day (Wojtek Ziemilski, Jan Klata), involving the exhibition of things in the theater and in performances. Departing from a textual perspective whose patron is Foucault, Kościelniak proposes an analysis of the motif from the perspective of the return to things, whose patron is Latour. This article tests the possibilities opened up by theater research in dealing with a turn toward the material, and attempts to respond to how far the work he covers realizes the departure from the semiotized things postulated in this research, toward, as Bjørnar Olsen writes, a "more just regime," based on the premise that things are "beings in the world, much like other beings, much like people, plants, and animals."
Katarzyna Waligóra. Things and Actors
Katarzyna Waligóra provides an overview of the role of objects during rehearsals for the play The Towiańists, Kings of the Clouds by Jolanta Janiczak and Wiktor Rubin. The author analyzes the way substitute props were used while working on the play, and the confrontation between actors/the director and the materials, which give resistance and cannot easily be subordinated. She calls attention to the dynamic shifts in relationships between the actor and the object, pondering the role of the prop in the process of creating the play, whose visual/sensual effect is ultimately hidden behind a network of semiotic links.
Mateusz Borowski, Małgorzata Sugiera. Realism Version 2.0: Differences in Perspective
Two models of realism are described in this article as versions 1.0 and 2.0. The authors regard realism as a historical concept that undergoes modifications with shifts in perception of reality. Scientific discoveries, for instance, affect the strategies of producing a realist effect in art. The first part of the article, devoted to realism 1.0, shows a concept of realism in the latter half of the 19th century, and casts new light on the work of Émil Zola on naturalism in the theater. Realism 2.0, in turn, has been conceptualized with regard toSusan-Lori Parks' drama Venus, and to films defined as "mockumentaries." The authors describe the impact of post-humanist reflections and the affiliated new concept of the human subject on the redefinition of the traditional notion of realism and the strategies in producing an impression of reality.
Patrycja Cembrzyńska. Return of the Clown
The point of departure for Patrycja Cembrzyńska's article about the phenomenon of Hitler as a "star of the stage" is the banality of evil. Cembrzyńska details the theatrical and iconographic devices used by Hitler, as they allowed him to enhance his charismatic power through suggestive images. Insightfully observing the process by which the Führer changed into his own caricature, the author considers the role of the clown – a figure who is "a parody of a demon, exorcised through laughter and mockery," both in history and in mass culture. She also looks at the media career of Silvio Berlusconi, stating that: "there is no longer any such thing as an inappropriate means of positioning a political brand name, ever since the old principle of 'the end justifies the means' is accompanied by a conviction of the advantage of television recognizability over competence."
Monika Pasiecznik. Porno Adorno
Monika Pasiecznik reviews a project by renowned composer Johannes Kreidler – Audioguide (Centralstation in Darmstadt, premiere: 4.08.2014), described as conceptual music theater. This over-seven-hour spectacle is an eclectic work, combining video art (including pornographic films), music collages, and aspects of happenings. This play is, according to the author, an attempt to topple Theodor W. Adorno's theory on the shift in the music paradigm, which, according to the composers, stretches the capabilities of music and even its definition. Meanwhile, Kreidler conceptualizes music, extends the medium to include theater and art, and articulates important social and political ideas, without forgoing advanced audio strategies.
Not Just for Laughs: Monika Pasiecznik Speaks with Johannes Kreidler
Kreidler speaks, above all, about the Audioguide performance(Centralstation in Darmstadt, premiere: 4.08.2014), for which he wrote and assembled music, and created a video, which he directed and acted in. Being a nearly single-handed creator of this play, the artist intends to adapt it to the audience and the space with every presentation. The interview also comments on the reflections upon the contemporary music scene that appear in the play, in the experimental scene, for instance, which, the composer believes, can only develop as it should in the framework of highly financed festivals.
Zbigniew Majchrowski. Błoński in the Laboratory
An article by Zbigniew Majchrowski analyzing the ties between Professor Jan Błoński and the Laboratory Theater as a point of departure to examining the ambiguous position of Błoński the critic vis-a-vis the theater of Jerzy Grotowski. The author takes a look at his evolving critical reflections and and describes the shared sites between Błoński's academic creativity and Grotowski's theater, including an interest in the theatrical vision of Antonin Artaud and the undying inspiration of the work of Wyspiański. Majchrowski tries to find a response to what caused him to occupy such a special position in the Laboratory Theater, his work being amid the output of four critics of the Kazimierz Wyka school.
Paweł Schreiber. Melodrama Stripped Bare
Paweł Schreiber reviews the play The Leper: A Melodrama, based on the novel by Helena Mniszkówna, directed by Wojciech Faruga at Bydgoszcz's Polski Theater (premiere: 7.05.2014). The author calls attention to the dramaturgical strategy employed by Faruga and Paweł Sztarbowski (the co-author of the script and the dramaturg), who decided to tease out the motivations, frustrations, and weaknesses of the protagonists that the novel passes over in silence, giving this tear-jerking text a new and terrifying complexion. Schreiber sees this play as an attempt to deal with the genre of the melodrama, which is, it turns out, a major challenge for the stage.
Agata Łuksza. In the Belly of the Giant Fish
Agata Łuksza reviews the premiere of Pinocchio – another play for children directed by Anna Smolar, which is also the first event for young viewers at the Nowy Theater in Warsaw (premiere: 31.05.2014). The author analyzes the poetic of the play, which draws audiences young and old into the magical dimension of theater. The performance was based on a modernized version of the fairy tale about Pinocchio, written by Joël Pommerat. Its partial removal from the original fairy tale significantly affects the expression of the performance, and makes it rather remarkable when compared to other plays for children.
Piotr Dobrowolski. Hitler's Spring
A review of a stage adaptation of a novel by Igor Ostachowicz, Night of the Living Jews, directed by Aleksandra Popławska and Marek Kalita (who plays the lead; Dramatyczny Theater in Warsaw, premiere: 4.04.2014). The author criticizes the fidelity of the play to its literary source, resulting in scenes that are boring and based on a literal presentation of the contents of the book (a first-person narrator from off-stage comments on and explains the action on stage). There are, however, moments that shine – particularly the stunning musical finale. Much like Ostachowicz's work itself, the play generates mixed feelings.
Maria Magdalena Beszterda. Anti-Fairy-Tale
A review of the play Peter Pan directed by Ewelina Marciniak (Współczesny Theater in Szczecin, premiere: 22.03.2014) based on a text by Michał Buszewicz that was inspired by James Matthew Barrie's work. The reviewer notes that the creators of the presentation modernized the aesthetic and linguistic layers of the novel, while maintaining the worst models of traditional patriarchal culture. "Perhaps Barrie's text was meant to be taken critically," writes Beszterda, "but this is nowhere to be seen in the play. It is a caricature on a one-to-one scale, and irony without distance does not pass the grade." The numerous intertextual allusions, on the other hand, make this staging rather hermetic.
Matylda Sielska. A New Mystery Play for a New Era
This review of an opera premiere by Barbara Wysocka focuses both on the musical and the stage aspect of the work. Sielska appreciates the knowledgeable translation of this seemingly "untheatrical" subject into a theatrical form: monumental, though free of pathos. The mystery-play form of Moby Dick (Wielki Theater – National Opera in Warsaw, premiere: 25.06.2014) is confirmed, she believes, by the staticity of the work and the numerous biblical references. The brilliantly composed form of the play is consistently executed by the singer/actors, the choir, and the ballet dancers. Trying to understand the literary level of the opera inspired by Melville’s great novel, the author of the review appreciates the skillful weave of all of the stage elements of the hybrid stage/opera form in this particular staging.
Katarzyna Fazan. Hybrids / Mestizos beyond Golgotha?
Once again, Katarzyna Fazan casts her critical eye at Poznań's Malta Festival (Poznań, 9-29.06.2014). The author considers the subject of censorship, which, following the scandal that surrounded Rodrigo García's play, weighed upon the reception of almost all the festival events. Detailing such "explosive" plays as Emilio García Wehbi's King Lear, the second part of the Anatomy of Violence in Columbia trilogy by the Mapa Theatro ensemble, or the dance-performance production by Tania Solomonoff, Madera [Wood], and the photographic installation by Erika Diettes, Sudarios [Shrouds], she observes a field of activity between the public and the intimate, rooted in culture and independent of all the dogma we have known to date.
Piotr Dobrowolski. The Arsonist
Piotr Dobrowolski reviews the book Dorota Semenowicz has edited on Rodrigo García – García:The Remains of the World (Ha!art, Malta Foundation, Kraków 2014). The publication includes dramatic texts by García that were previously unpublished in Polish. Each of these is preceded by essays allowing the reader to see the artist's wider creative context. The collection of analyses of dramatic texts and plays has been supplemented by photographs and an interview by Dorota Semenowicz and Katarzyna Tórz. According to the reviewer, it is worth stressing the Ha!art Corporation's consistency in publishing books on world performing arts for several years, giving them a very accessible and attractive form.
Ewa Fita. Hell on Earth
A report from this year's Contact Festival in Toruń (24-30.05.2014). The main subject of this edition is social and family dysfunctions. As such, the majority of the plays were political and could be classified as documentary theater. One of the festival's best performances, The Blue Boy, was based on data from the Rayan Report of 2009, which revealed many years of sexual molestation and maltreatment of the wards of Catholic correction centers in Ireland. The author is less enthusistic, on the other hand, about an ethically murky play by Oliver Frljić, addressing the the unlawful deprivation of 27,000 people's civil rights in socialist Slovenia.
Joanna Braun. Anima Animation
Joanna Braun's article sums up the 26th International Art of Puppetry Festival in Bielsko-Biała (22-25.05.2014). The author admires the technical ability and skillfulness in making contact with the audience in the play awarded the Grand Prix, Table,by England's Blind Summit Theatre. At the same time, she questions the verdict by pointing out what she saw as more interesting productions: Fragility by the Onírica Mecánica theater, which spoke of the life of man-like machines to address the subject of human feelings and emotions, Land of Spells, based on Lewis Carroll's famous book, by Teatro de Marionetas do Porto, and Cabinet of Curiosities by the directorial trio of Gottschalk – Mürle – Soehnle, which Braun believes was iconographically inspired by Hieronymous Bosch's Paradise.
Karolina Wycisk. In Between
Karolina Wycisk sums up the 2nd International KRoki Festival of Contemporary Dance (Krakow, 22-30.05.2014). The critic points out that the theme of this year's edition was the eclecticism of dance theater – its ties to performance, martial arts, photography, new media, and contact improvization. Wycisk lingers over a few selected plays: Cheap Lecture and Cow Piece by the Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion duo, I, You – We, Days for Dancing byTomasz Bazan, Dancing about byGob Squad, Help Me to Crush by Małgorzata Haduch, and Insight byJanusz Orlik and Joanna Leśnierowska.
Monika Muskała. A Higher Grade of Compromise
A report from this year's edition of the Wiener Festwochen festival (9.05 - 15.06.2014), mainly devoted to its opera productions. Muskała describesluck's Orpheus and Eurydice as directed by Romeo Castellucci, where the image and the story of a real comatose little girl have been used in a controversial fashion. More conservative, yet emotionally outstanding is Mozart's Cosi fan tutte by Michael Haneke. The author also admires the updated music and staging of Verdi's Macbeth, directed by Brett Bailey (South Africa), which shifts the action into an African context.
Anna R. Burzyńska. The Meaning of Individuality
In this report on Theater der Welt (Mannheim, 23.05 – 8.06.2014), Burzyńska begins with a lengthy description of Gob Squad's performance The Conversationalist, in which a report on a tennis match is translated into interhuman communication. Then she notes that the subject of the most interesting festival presentations was the essence of individuality, and not issues of collective identity. She backs this thesis with the examples of Fiction by the Cia. Hiato Company and three remarkably demanding solo performances: the dance performance Sous leurs pieds, le paradis by Radhouane El Meddeb, the concert-play-performance Peaches Christ Superstar by Canadian electropunk star Peaches, and a cabaret-like show by Kim Noble – You Are Not Alone.
Grzegorz Kondrasiuk. Water on Mars: Juggling with Chaos
Water on Mars is a circus production which, according to Grzegorz Kondrasiuk, is part of the "new circus" movement. This is the name given to pieces that verge on performative arts, shows, and circuses. Water on Mars is created by a trio of very young yet highly regarded jugglers. The technical skill displayed under the pretext of mere tricks allows the artists not only to juggle "anything" "infinitiely," but also to wander among the crowd and ask: What is a juggler, and what is he for? The text focuses not only on this performance, but also on the contemporary circus and its place among the other arts.
Dorota Jarząbek-Wasyl. Blow-up: The Epoch of Polish Acting according to Beata Guczalska
Beata Guczalska's book Polish Acting: Generations(PWST, Krakow 2014) depicts the evolution of the Polish dramatic art in institutional theaters after 1945. The work includes a description of the acting aesthetics and techniques of both concrete individuals and entire ensembles. Guczalska primarily draws from materials that were generated while working on productions and from actors' reflections. Writing on the contextuality of the actor's art she draws from Clifford Geertz's theory of interpretive anthropology. While noting that the book is a remarkably exhaustive and valuable study, the reviewer does remark that the actresses have been treated as supporting characters.
Ewelina Godlewska-Byliniak. Figures of Absence/Presence
A review of Marta Kufel's book The "Erroneous Bethlehem" of Tadeusz Kantor, which appeared as part of Księgarnia Akademicka's "Interpretations" series (Krakow 2013). Kufel takes a philosophical/existential stance to describe Tadeusz Kantor's two models of presence in the plays he created. She proves that the artist's decision to be present on stage was tied to the process of reshaping the theological model, which is central to his work. At the same time, the author perceives three figures of absence: the "absent father," the "empty spaces the Jews left behind," and the "empty space left by Christ." Kufer's means of analyzing the structure of Kantor's imagination in this book is based on the conviction that theology is recoded in his work and acquires new meaning.
Thomas Irmer. Europe in Large Chunks
Irmer reviews Wolfgang Kröplin's book Auf der Suche nach dem unbekannten Theater:Bilder und Befunde vom mittelosteuropäischen Theater(Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2013), a vast study devoted to the Central European theater environment of the 1970s and '80s. A shared context for the various syntheses of theatrical work in the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Hungary is the grotesque, which was born at the crossroads of theatrical backwardness and the need to subvert the official reality, as well as the model of aesthetic collision between the concept of the "instructive" national theater and the opposing practice of theater of forms open to the viewer. |