Monika Świerkosz. The Truth Can Be a Rock
Monika Świerkosz reviews The Gorgonowa Affair byWiktor Rubin and Jolanta Janiczak (National Stary Theater, premiere: 28.03.2015). The author describes the performance in the historical context of the Rita Gorgonowa trial, showing how the play departs from mere reenactment of facts. It also traces the dramaturgical strategies the play uses in terms of the category of truth. Świerkosz particularly appreciates Marta Ścisłowicz's creation, though she admits that the scene of the actor's hypnotism does not render the profounder dimension of the titular protagonist.
In a State of Accusation: Marta Ścisłowicz in conversation with Monika Kwaśniewska
This conversation focuses on Marta Ścisłowicz's collaboration with Jolanta Janiczak and Wiktor Rubin. The actress speaks of her method of working with the text, which was being created during the rehearsals, and the unusual mode of creating the play, which involved a joint search for meaning and stage solutions. She devotes a great deal of space to the character of Rita Gorgonowa, who took shape at the crossroads between various, often contradictory expectations the other protagonists had of her. She claims that the key experiences in the process of shaping her role were the journey to Gorgonowa's hometown and hypnosis, which turned out to be a splendid tool for her acting. Moreover, Ścisłowicz speaks of her work in a television series, contrasting the television and theater “markets.”
Zbigniew Majchrowski. The Forefathers' Eve Historical Reconstruction Group
A review of the play Forefathers' Eve Part III directed by Michał Zadara at the Polski Theater in Wrocław (premiere: 10.04.2015). Majchrowski stresses that, in trying to distance himself from formulaic interpretations, the director alludes to a different theatrical or film convention in every scene (e.g. the Warsaw Salon bears traces of operetta style). Although the text is staged in its entirety, there is a non-orthodox approach to its rhythm and versification. A major advantage of the production is the combination of the conscious staging and interpretation of the tradition of the text with an ironic, fresh, and innovative reading.
Piotr Gruszczyński. After the Premiere
A brief commentary on the premiere of Forefathers' Eve Part III directed by Michał Zadara at the Polski Theater in Wrocław (premiere: 10.04.2015). The author describes selected scenes from the performance, praising the acting and pointing out the directorial distance kept from the selected staging conventions. In Gruszczyński's view, the Wrocław production of Forefathers' Eveis a pleasure to watch, and listening to Mickiewicz's text on stage evokes a wide range of unexpected thoughts and associations.
Anna R. Burzyńska. Pondering the End of the World in Costumes on the Seashore: Philippe Quesne and Vivarium Studio
Anna Róża Burzyńska's article is an introduction to the work of Philippe Quesne and his Vivarium Studio ensemble. The author describes a number of the director's plays (to La Démangeaison des ailes, D’après Nature, L‘Effet de Serge, La Mélancolie des dragons, Big Bang, Next Day), drawing attention to his philosophical approach to the reality. To capture Quesne's special melancholy style, Burzyńska applies the language of phenomenology. At the same time she explains the contexts and inspirations behind the various works, with special attention to the model of the world that emerges in the plays, highlighted through the set design.
The Theater Nature Gives Us: Philippe Quesne in conversation with Piotr Olkusz
Piotr Olkusz speaks with Philippe Quesne, founder of the Vivarium Studio ensemble. The director describes his experiences as a set designer, what inspires him, and his understanding of the notion of the theater laboratory. He says that the founding experience of his theater was contact with the work of such playwrights as Philippe Minyana, Noëlle Renaude, and Michel Vinaver (although the plays of Vivarium Studio are not based on dramas, and use words to a very limited degree). The director also indicates the vast significance of small objects and the recycling of props which keep returning in his work and form the reality of many consecutive plays.
Tomasz Kowalski. Swamp Culture
Tomasz Kowalski reviews Swamp Club byPhilippe Quesne and Vivarium Studio
(Wiener Festwochen, premiere: 4.06.2013; Polish showing: CK Zamek, for the #you are not indifferent to me series, 29.03.2014). The author describes the course of the play's narrative in detail, calling attention to the spaces in which the events take place and the various accompanying atmospheres. For Kowalski, the notion of patience is key to the project (both in terms of its interpretation and participation in it).
Patrycja Cembrzyńska. The Atomic Menagerie: Episodes from a “Monstrous” Life
The phantom of a traumatic, post-nuclear landscape haunts the culture, even in its popular manifestations. Patrycja Cembrzyńska recalls a range of tragic historical events associated with nuclear/atomic attacks, accidents, or experiments, and goes on to analyze texts that show their impact, or even remote echo. The author ponders the role of man, animals, and various mutations in this post-apocalyptic reality. Her deliberations also focus on issues tied to the functions of various cultural products that address this subject in the reader's/audience's consciousness.
Monika Żółkoś. The Melancholy of Taxidermy
Monika Żółkoś takes the reader into the world of taxidermy, the art of stuffing and treating dead animals. Departing from colonialism, Żółkoś presents selected extracts from the history of taxidermy, covers some techniques for preparing animal bodies, as well as the ambitions and premises of the creators of the practice. Żółkoś juxtaposes the work of taxidermists, which is historically perceived as scientific or for display purposes, with the work of contemporary artists working in “artistic taxidermy.” She analyzes Katarzyna Kozyra's Animal Pyramid, Iris Schieferstein's Life Can Be So Nice, and works by Angela Singer.
Dorota Sajewska. Body/Memory, Body/Archive
Dorota Sajewska ponders the significance of the actor/performer's body in art which aims to mediate the experiences of the second and third generation after the Holocaust. Referencing such performance theorists as Peggy Phelan, José Esteban Muñoz, Rebecca Schneider, and Diana Taylor, she calls attention to the marginalization of work with the body in Western culture, which led to the removal of the body from the archive, and simultaneously from the field of impact on historical narrative and identity politics. Analyzing selected examples of contemporary practices in art, Sajewska demonstrates how, in evading controlled forms of recording and storing history and preserving what is marginal in a culture, the body stresses the partiality, frailty, and fragmentariness of memory and the relative nature of the historical narratives constructed on its basis.
Performative Archives: From the Institution Effect to the Practice of Thinking. Ernst van Alphen in Conversation with Roma Sendyka
Roma Sendyka's conversation with Ernst van Alphen focuses on the subject of the archive. The researcher mentions various ways of understanding this term and states that he is most interested in the ties between the archive and the work of the artist. Van Alphen sees the archive as performative, it has its own activity which cannot be fully controlled. The conversation also addresses the relationship between the archive and pictures in their broadest definition, the future of reflecting upon this medium, and possible paths of its development.
Agata Adamiecka-Sitek. The Prince and the Camera
Agata Adamiecka-Sitek provides an insightful analysis of the straight-to-video play The Prince created by Karol Radziszewski, based on a script by Dorota Sajewska. The author notes that the play is based on a deconstructive discussion with Jerzy Grotowski's The Constant Prince, with a special focus on the titular role played by Ryszard Cieślak, and also on the performative activation of the documentation of the performance itself.
Agnieszka Dauksza. KwieKulik as Weary Terrorists: The Art of Affective Realism
The point of departure here is the laboratory approach of the KwieKulik duo's work. The author's concept of “laboratory of experiments” pertains to the neo-avant-garde artists' postulated practice of salvaging the spheres of existence, art, and science. By the same token, the aim of KwieKulik's work was to break existing conventions and develop new forms of expression, to comment on political situations and spark real social change. Imperatively, one of the consequences of the laboratory work was to create an art of affective realism. In her conclusion, the author identifies this, provisionally describes it, and sums up the consequences of KwieKulik's method.
Katarzyna Fazan. The Disassembled Body: Reversed Representation in the Pictures of Andrzej Wróblewski
“The Recto/Verso exhibition of Wróblewski's work flips inside-out. It forces us to go through the picture, to confront its flip side, to have a look behind the wall,” writes Katarzyna Fazan on Andrzej Wróblewski: Recto/Verso. 1948-1949, 1956-1957 at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (12.02-17.05.2015; co-organizer: National Museum – Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid). Curated by Érica de Chassey in collaboration with Marta Dziewańska and Dorota Jarecka, the author takes the exhibition as a springboard for a complex study of Wróblewski's work, addressing both its content and formal categories. Fazan also inquires into how Wróblewski's work is presented and the flow of the exhibition's narrative.
Monika Świerkosz. Provincial Tales: The Voice of the Provinces or Another (Big-)City Fantasy?
In the first part of this text Monika Świerkosz describes and analyzes how the concept of provinciality functions in various cultural, artistic, sociological, and historical contexts. She calls attention to two tendencies in conceiving the provincial, involving its mythologization on the one hand and its demonization on the other. Then she recalls and describes two Białystok performances that address the subject of the “provincial”:Agnieszka Korytkowska-Mazur's Unripe Fruit, based on a book by Wioletta Grzegorzewska (a rather unsuccessful play, to her mind, based on a fine book) and Adam Biernacki's Almonds and Raisins (a project that brilliantly depicts life in a Polish/Jewish border town).
Ewa Bal. Has the Plebian Silesia Overshadowed Aristocratic Silesia? Problems in Depicting Locality in the Theater
The reader is reminded of the world of the prewar Silesian aristocracy, which, as proven by Ewa Bal, set the foundations of Silesia and Silesianness. The author analyzes Silesianness in the context of the concept of locality put forward by Arjun Appadurai in his book Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, pondering why the creators of plays concerning Silesia do not examine the region's aristocratic roots. Bal analyzes plays produced over the last few seasons, including Marcin Gaweł's monodrama Sonny Boy directed byMaciej Podstawny, Chicks directed by Marcin Gaweł, Morphine directed by Ewelina Marciniak, The Fifth Side of the World directed by Robert Talarczyk, and Red Basin directed by Marek Kalita and Aleksandra Popławska.
Piotr Olkusz. The Efficacy of Local Theater
Piotr Olkusz's article is an attempt to map out the local theater in Poland and fit it into the wider context of discussion on local particularities and the complicated relations between the utilitarian and political roles of art. The author outlines the evolution of the movement, which has crossed over into the mainstream of theater aesthetics. His subjective overview of the most important phenomena in local theater over the past decade or so also includes failed projects, which he sees as examples of the idea of distorting locality and reducing it to yet another theatrical format. Olkusz surveys the critical potential of the local theater with reference to research on grass-roots revolutionary tactics and the political stance of such authors as David Harvey, Claire Bishop, and Jacques Rancière.
Maria Kobielska. Can an Uprising Be Silesian? The Silesian Museum Boom and the Polish Culture of Memory
This article is devoted to the performative aspects and affects accompanying a visit to the Museum of the Silesian Uprisings in Świętochłowice, opened October 2014. This interactive, multimedia museum is composed of several exhibition parts, including film and military. The design, by Emil and Georg Zillmann, is situated in a revitalized heritage building; the museum covers the Polish population's struggles with the German authorities in 1919-1921, corresponding to the plebiscite for Silesia's belonging to Poland. The creators of the exhibition make no attempt to be objective, demonstrating the remarkably emotional stories of the insurgents. The author sees a neutral approach to be both impossible and undesirable. She does point out, however, that the exhibition's narrative is primarily from a male perspective.
Katarzyna Waligóra. I Don't Want to See
Katarzyna Waligóra reviews the play Faust directed by Michał Borczuch (Polski Theater in Bydgoszcz, premiere: 14.03.2015). The author describes the dramaturgical structure of the performance, in which two themes run simultaneously and overlap: (non-)seeing and the way women function in society. Waligóra opines that both the use of blind actors in the play and the cuts made to Goethe's text, which accentuates the female characters and covers up the male characters, serve to shift a socially marginalized group from the periphery to the center of sight.
Pola Sobaś-Mikołajczyk. When a Few Laps of the Swimming Pool Won't Cut It
Pola Sobaś-Mikołajczyk reviews two stage adaptations of Marius von Mayenburg's drama Martyrs, directed by Grzegorz Jarzyna (TR Warsaw, premiere: 14.04.2015) and by Anna Augustynowicz (Dramatyczny Theater in Wałbrzych and Współczesny Theater in Szczecin, premiere: 11.10.2014). The author puts forward the thesis that the two stagings are opposite interpretations of the text, which means they enter an interesting sort of dialogue. To her mind Augustynowicz's play tackles the theme of the fragility of the secular world-view in the face of fanaticism, while Jarzyna's performance draws from the ideological debate on the interference of the Catholic Church in secular institutions and investigates the power (political or otherwise) of fundamentalism backed by unshakeable faith.
Aleksandra Haduła. A Puppeteer and a Choir of Souls
Aleksandra Haduła reviews Paweł Passini's play based on Forefathers' Eve (Alojzy Smolka Puppet and Actor Theater, premiere: 14.03.2015). The author points out the director's consistent concept in creating the atmosphere of a ceremony and prompting individual audience responses without imposing concrete interpretations. The strategy of adapting the drama is also important in the use of puppets. Passini mainly uses the motifs of madness and mysticism, while the melody and rhythm of the words play a much more important role than the structure of the events, as stressed by the phonetic inscription of the title: ['d?ad?].
Łucja Iwanczewska. The Emancipatory Potential of Zborowski
An article inspired by the play Samuel Zborowski, directed by Paweł Wodziński (Polski Theater in Bydgoszcz, premiere: 28.03.2015). The author points out that Polishness is not at the heart of the Bydgoszcz production, and Lucifer – its central figure – travels between different worlds and times. This transforms the story of Zborowski into a tale of contemporary revolutionaries and rebels; of a self-made man who matures to his own subjectivity. Iwanczewska believes that in Wodziński's production myth is transgressed in order to create emancipatory potential.
Natalia Brajner. “A Jolly Story, and Thus Enormously Sad”
Natalia Brajner reviews a play by Cezary Tomaszewski, The Wedding, Based on the Wedding, performed at Opole's Jan Kochanowski Theater (premiere: 16.04.2015). According to the author, Tomaszewski's performance strikes up a discussion with Stanisław Wyspiański's text and its canonical, symbolic interpretation, and not, as the creators suggest, a liberation from the traditional reading. It is also an attempt to construct an up-to-date, tragicomic appraisal of the state of Polish society.
Marta Bryś. The Polish Jewish Theater
Marta Bryś reviews two plays performed at the Jewish Theater in Warsaw – Maja Kleczewska's Dybbuk (premiere: 17.04.2015) and Non-existent Families, or: Anonymous Polish Jewsby Wojciech Klemm (premiere: 28.03.2015). In describing Kleczewska's play, the author notes that the director has foregone the powerful means of expression usually found in her theater. She has made a melancholy performance that poses no important questions and avoids confrontation, preferring to offer the audience a safe sense of sadness. Klemm's intimate production tackles the issue of discovering Jewish identity. Bryś sees it as less than radical, and inappropriate to the current socio-political situation. She does note interesting strands in either production, however, which could add nuances to the issues they address.
Maksymilian Wroniszewski. A Halfhearted Revolution
Maksymilian Wroniszewski reviews The Coming Spring by Natalia Korczakowska, performed at Wybrzeże Theater in Gdańsk, in dramaturgical collaboration with Wojtek Zrałek-Kossakowski (premiere: 14.03.2015). The author believes that the director's decision to focus on the subject of revolution deprives the characters of psychological depth and leads him to miss many interesting strands of the novel. Weaving in episodes from the history of Poland (from 1945 and 1989), and setting the second part of the play in contemporary times, Korczakowska suggests the endless turning of the wheel of history, which is the main (and, according the critic, the only) thematic axis of the performance.
Klaudia Laś. Odysseus Disgraced
Klaudia Laś reviews the play Kajzar: A 1982 Odyssey, directed by Maciej Podstawny (dramaturgy: Zuzanna Bojda, Dorota Semenowicz, Maciej Podstawny; Ludwik Solski Polski Theater in Tarnów, premiere: 26.03.2015). The world premiere of three unperformed plays – +++ (Three Crosses), The Hair of the Fool, and Continuation, dappled with fragments from other texts by Kajzar – is, in the author's view, an attempt to assemble almost the entire oeuvre of this writer into one story, and simultaneously it is a reflection upon his identity. The interpretive key is the artist's biography, presented in the context of the Odysseus myth.
Piotr Dobrowolski. Kalisz, Kadalisz, Kaliszmar
Piotr Dobrowolski reviews Weronika Szczawińska's play Disasters in the History of the City, based on a text by Agnieszka Jakimiak (Wojciech Bogusławski Theater in Kalisz, premiere: 25.04.2015). The performance was inspired by Italo Calvino's novel Invisible Cities and Władysława Kościelniak's Disasters in the History of the City of Kalisz. The author points out that the attempt to give the performance a musical structure failed, owing to the lack of precision in the performance and the numerous missteps in the acting. The idea to create images through sound is incoherent, leading to cacophony, and the poetic dramaturgy additionally hinders watching the play.
Julia Lizurek. (Un)real Escape
Julia Lizurek reviews the play King Maciuś I directed by Dagmara Żabska (Figur Theater in Krakow, premiere: 28.11.2014). The author notes that this shadow play for children is a tale of childhood loneliness and the need for change that it can bring. Lizurek praises both the formal execution of the play and its dramaturgical construction. However, she criticizes the fairy-tale aura of the performance and the feel-good finale, suggesting that the seriousness in staging the issue was not allowed to sufficiently resound.
Grzegorz Kondrasiuk. Belorus's PlaStforma, Ukraine's Zelyonka: Dance, the East, Contemporary, and a Mystery
Grzegorz Kondrasiuk reviews two remarkable festivals on the eastern map: the third edition of PlaStforma – Minsk 2015 (9-14.02.2015) and 1.5 Zelyonka Fest – Contemporary Dance Festival in Kiev (16-19.03.2015). The report on the festival is woven with the circumstances behind organizing cultural events in Ukraine and in Belarus, and a commentary on the situation and quality of contemporary dance in these countries. Kondrasiuk also describes the various performances. He particularly singles out the In Four Hands ID Dance Project, Bolshe Vozdukha Vnutri(Inside of More Air) byJulia Danilenko and Alina Slivinska, Dostup k Tielu (Access to the Body) by InZhest Theater, and the Lithuanian Contemporary? performance by Art Printing House.
Katarzyna Osińska. Politics and Aesthetics in Today's Russian Theater
This article's springboard is Russian Case during the Gold Mask Festival in Moscow. Katarzyna Osińska sketches out the latest tendencies in Russian theater, with particular attention to the problematic relations between its art and politics. She focuses on the work of such directors as Kiril Syeryebryennikov and Konstantin Bogomolov, and on those directors who raised a great deal of controversy in the previous year, or came into conflict with the state apparatus (Teatr.doc) and the Orthodox Church (Timofey Kulabin). The author analyzes their plays in the context of the nationwide tendency to return to the authority of the classics in a time of socio-political change, when many in the society have come to see the traditional as being under threat.
Friederike Felbeck. Crime under Duress
The Bride of Lammermoor at the Bayerische Staatsoper is Barbara Wysocka's second production for a Munich stage, following Wozzeck at the Kammerspiele. This tale of an incapacitated woman who falls victim to social dependencies is the point of departure for one of the best known belcanto operas. Frederike Felbeck opines that, as opposed to other threadbare interpretations, the director has managed to reinvigorate the dramatic material in an interesting fashion. He calls attention to the major role of Barbara Hanicka's set design in creating the surreal scene for Lucy's fate to unfold, which the director places in the context of the conservative, restrictive, asexualhigh-society America of the 1950s and 60s.
Natalia Jakubowa. Parsifal and the Limits of Paraphrasing an Opera Libretto
A review of Parsifal directed by Dimitri Cherniakov at the Berlin Staatsoper (premiere: 28.03.2015). The creators have bypassed the historical/religious aspect of the work, despite the fact that the play's premiere took place in the Easter holiday season and the content of Richard Wagner's musical drama ties in with the story of the sacrifice and redemption of Christ. In this interpretation Parsifal is an outsider, a rebel who undermines the operatic pathos of the work. The reviewer notes that the focus of the opera has been shifted to the fate of Kundry – the apocryphal heroine of the tale, and one of the composer's sources of inspiration.
Thomas Irmer. Who Is Edek?
A review of Tango directed by Klaus-Peter Fischer (Landesbühne Sachsen in Dresden, premiere: 5.12.2014). Irmer notes that Sławomir Mrożek's drama was once very popular, read as a philosophical parable of cultural transformations, with the character of Artur in the center. With this return to the text after almost twenty years of its total absence on German stages, she notes a major shift in its interpretation. Irmer describes the historical (trauma caused by the destruction of cities in 1945), social, and political (the arising of a Dresden civic movement against Islamization) context of the premiere, indicating that Edek is central to Fischer's very classical staging. As a “plebian who radically changes and annihilates everything he fuses the history of many generations into a new tale through Tango.”
Katarzyna Waligóra. Forms of the Absurd
Katarzyna Waligóra reviews the 50th Counterpoint Revue of Small Theatrical Forms (Szczecin, 17-26.04.2015), focusing on three performances in particular: Mystery Magnet by CAMPO, Von einem der auszog weil er sich die Miete nicht mehr leisten konnte (Of a Man Who Moved out, Because He Couldn't Afford the Rent)byRené Pollesch and Dirk von Lowtzow, and Distant Voices by Heine Avdal and Yukiko Shinozaki. The author points out that all three plays combine the use of an interesting scenographic concept or formal solution; thinking in visual categories, stressing the visual and material composition of the play and skillfully using irony, comedy, and the absurd.
Sandra Szwarc. The Poetry of Reportage
Sandra Szwarc writes of two plays shown in the framework of Flemish Week (15-23.03.2015) at Gdańsk's Shakespeare Theater as part of the Theaters of Europe series. The first is Peter Verhelst's autobiographical monodrama Africa about a person with a split identity, who divides his life between Belgium and Kenya. The second is the performance Front (premiere: 22 March 2014) by Luk Perceval based on All Quiet on the Western Front byErich Maria Remarque, the journals of Henri Barbusse titled Fire, and war documentary materials. Szwarc writes that the two plays, though very different, “were collages of emotions, a hodgepodge of visions and impressions; a combination of poetic and documentary components that formed a fluid and fleeting image, crowned with a striking conclusion.”
Diana Poskuta-Włodek. Modrzejewska – A Muse of Theatrological Source Research?
Diana Poskuta-Włodek proves that source research continues to be essential to the development of theatrology, using constantly updated methodology. She investigates this on the basis of the continuing research into the life and work of Helena Modrzejewska. In this context the prime example, according to the author, is Modrzejewska/Letters: The Correspondence of Helena Modrzejewska and Karol Chłapowski 1859-1886, Volumes 1 and 2, edited by Alicja Kędziora and Emil Orzechowski (Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, Warsaw 2015). It includes all the available correspondence between Modrzejewska and Chłapowski,precededby a reprint of Jerzy Got's introduction from the 1965 publication, and also furnished with an editor's note, and footnotes that are largely new or updated.
Małgorzata Jabłońska. A Play of the Imagination
Małgorzata Jabłońska begins her review of the publication The Theatrical Score of 'The Seagull' by Anton Chekov (PWST, Krakow 2014) by recalling the circumstances behind the first staging of Chekov's famous play. The author stresses how important the book is for beginning discussion with tradition in the contemporary theater and in critical and theoretical reflections. The work initiates the Theatrical Scores series. Jabłońska also describes the structure of the publication, particularly praising the introduction by Konstantin Rudnicki. She regards the very idea of the series released by the State Theater Academy to be promising.
Katarzyna Lemańska. Choreography as a Neuron Network
Katarzyna Lemańska reviews Tomasz Ciesielski's book The Dancing Mind: The Theater of Movement and Dance from a Neurocognitive Perspective (Łódź, 2014) devoted to the neuroaesthetics of dance. The author describes the structure of the publication in detail, noting that it facilitates two reading strategies – linear and issue-based. The book is addressed both to dance theorists and practitioners, and, as the author himself stresses, part of it remains debatable. Ciesielski states that his research method confirms the dancers' abilities, but is incapable of explaining the phenomenon of dance and movement.
Jerzy Timoszewicz. The Good Fairy of the Gaffe: A Small Anthology of Jan Kott's Literary Lapses
An anthology of Jan Kott's blunders preceded by an introduction by Maryla Zielińska which describes the relations between the former editorial team of Didaskalia magazine with Jerzy Timoszewicz. Timoszewicz's list was a present for the eighty-fifth birthday of his professor and close friend. Zielińska recalls that the editors did not accept the text for publication, because it did not “aim for the jugular and thus tripped over its own feet.” The present publication is a symbolic farewell to Jerzy Timoszewicz, who passed away on 24 March 2015. |