Dziady. Zawłaszczenie

Author(s): Iga Gańczarczyk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 114/2013

Iga Gańczarczyk describes the Dziady project of Łukasz Surowiec (an artist) and Stanisław Ruksza (a curator), which was realised at the Bunkier Sztuki Gallery in Kraków (6 II – 3 III 2013). The project was divided into two parts. The exhibition part contained documentation of three of the artist’s earlier works: Happy New Year, Black Diamonds and Carts, which takes up the issue of cooperating with the homeless and marginalized. The second part of the exhibition, Waiting Rooms, was a kind of performative space or place open around the clock for anyone, with particular emphasis on “dziady” (granddads), misfits and performers of life. However, due to there being little evidence of artistic and curatorial precision or the kid of forceful institutional constraints which Waiting Rooms was supposed to cut through, the project failed to become anything more than a reserve for the homeless, who were placed in it like objects in an ethnographic village.

Dziwactwa

Author(s): Marta Bryś / Language(s): Polish Issue: 114/2013

A text on two premieres at the Dramatyczny Theatre in Wałbrzych, realised as part of the !zapooomnij? season: Piotr Głowacki’s Good News (prem: 1 III 2013) and Ewelina Marciniak’s Heroes (prem: 8 III 2013). Bryś describes both plays, arguing that Good News, whichengages with biblical motifs, was “despite its sometimes surprising form, a vague performance”, while Heroes’ employment of stereotypical male and female characters was “surely an unintended yet at times extreme parody of feminist discourses”.

Muzyka w głowie albo kto nie ma pieniędzy

Author(s): Friederike Felbeck / Language(s): Polish Issue: 114/2013

A review of Barbara Wysocka’s production of Woyzeck/Wozzeck (the Munich Kammerspiele, prem: 30 IX 2012). The author argues that the director has assembled onstage two perfectly matching components: George Büchner’s play and Alban Berg’s musical setting. In Wysocka’s production, Büchner’s pompous statements sound convincing, contemporary and moving because, according to the reviewer, the characters emerge through sentences and individual words that form a mere surface level under which a genuine abyss lurks. By employing such resources, Wysocka shows a convincing contemporary story of a poor man excluded from society, who is at the mercy of the voices in his head.

Trujące kwiaty mej ojczyzny

Author(s): Joanna Wichowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 114/2013

A review of the Balladyna production by Krzystof Garbaczewski (direction) and Marcin Cecko (script and dramaturgy; the Polish Theatre in Poznań, prem: 25 I 2013). Wichowska sees in Balladyna a masterfully carried out attack on all those norms and definitions stabilizing identity from the top down, such as gender, the body, natural law, family, nationhood, tradition and culture. The author tracks the various motifs and layers contained within the production – from influences drawn from BioArt and biotechnology, through the sending up of the theatrical tradition to the issue of brutal patriotic socialization, which can become a form of drilling. She also writes about the autonomous interventions of other artists, which are woven into the production.

Korespondencja

Author(s): Leszek Kolankiewicz,Agata Adamiecka-Sitek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 114/2013

This correspondence between Agata Adamiecka-Sitek and Leszek Kolankiewicz presents an exchange of views regarding Agata Adamiecka-Sitek’s article Grotowski, Women and Homosexuals. On the margins of “Human Tragedy”, which was published in the 112th edition of Didaskalia. The letters were not written with potential publication in mind, yet contain a number of substantive comments based on a rich bibliography (footnotes have been added at the editor’s request), not only on Jerzy Grotowski’s Apocalypsis cum Figuris and the recording of this production, but also on research methodologies applicable to the history of theatre.

Kadrowanie tożsamości

Author(s): Piotr Dobrowolski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 114/2013

Dobrowolski notes that a key adaptation device used by Paweł Wodziński, director of Gombrowicz’s The Wedding, at the Polski Theatre in Bydgoszcz (prem: 17 XI 2012), was equipping Henryk with a camera and making him a documentarian. The entire dramatic projection of Henryk’s state of mind is in fact presented in media frames extended between the initial switching on of the camera and the final switching off of the TV set standing on the stage. The second important procedure that Wodziński employs is the casting of amateurs in all the supporting roles. In this play, the stage, as an ideal representation of the whole world, is a place in which illusion is created, and any naturalness is the outcome of long and demanding exercises.

Guliwer w bibliotece dystopii

Author(s): Aleksandra Kamińska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 114/2013

Mateusz Pakuła’s play My Anxiety is Armed, directed by Julia Mark (the Stefan Żeromski Theatre in Kielce, prem: 12 I 2013) is inspired by Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels. The Land of the Lilliputians is transferred into space, but the protagonists (there are as many as four Gullivers), rather than roaming alien planets, are traversing a dystopian space, unravelling a pessimistic vision of the future before the eyes of the spectators. Played out amid a grotesque fantastical stage set, the play is steeped in intertextual references – the reviewer therefore likens the weapon referred to in the play’s title to a “series of quotations”.

Narracja o zemście. Z Olgą Tokarczuk i Igorem Stokfiszewskim ozmawia Tatiana Drzycimska

Author(s): Tatiana Drzycimska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 114/2013

A record of the meeting which took place on 10 March 2013 at the Contemporary Theatre in Wrocław the day after Valley, a play directed by Agnieszka Olsten. Olga Tokarczyk talks about the process of writing her novel Drive Your Plough over the Bones of the Dead (which became the basis of the script for Valley), concentrating on the pitfalls lurking in the raising of the issue of the relationship between people and animals. She also comments on her book’s use of crime fiction conventions and its controversial ending. By way of contrast, Igor Stokfiszewski (playwright and co-creator of the script for Valley) talks about the rehearsals for the play, which mainly involved communing and interacting with the dogs invited to take part in the play: Kolo, Santos and Wena. He also explains why he and the director decided to change the final part of their stage adaptation of the book.

Z ducha pozytywnej kompromitacji. Z Justyną Wasilewską rozmawia Katarzyna Lemańska

Author(s): Katarzyna Lemańska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 114/2013

The actress speaks of her work on the title role in Marcin Cecko’s Balladyna, directed by Krzysztof Garbaczewski (the Polish Theatre in Poznań, prem: 25 I 2013). Justyna Wasilewska introduces her character in three configurations: Balladyna/me/actress. This simultaneous action across three registers enables her to break away from the male paradigm and speak in her own language. In her view, the feminist patriotic discourse in the second part of the play not only relates the story of the powerlessness of a woman, but that of the human subject in general.

Teatr Marthalera w operze Janáčka

Author(s): Joanna Walaszek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 114/2013

A review of Leoš Janáček’s The Makropulos Affair, directed by Christoph Marthaler (Polish premiere: the Grand Theatre – National Opera, 17 II 2013). In the reviewer’s opinion, the director plays a daring and wicked game with operatic convention and the expectations of the opera audience. For in this production, the unique style of Marthaler’s theatre is extremely evident, featuring, as it does, the reappearance of his favourite motifs and modes of action. Marthaler also adds a metaphysical comedy dimension to The Makropoulos Affair, combining the myth of eternal youth with enslavement, mechanical repetition, inertia, exhaustion, boredom, emptiness and, above all, the suspension of time and loss of self-esteem.

Ożenek odzyskany

Author(s): Katarzyna Osińska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 114/2013

Gogol’s Marriage (the Studio Theatre in Warsaw, prem: 4 II 2013) was directed by Ivan Vyrypaev under the influence of inspirations from the theatre of Yevgeny Vakhtangov. In the author’s view, both directors are searching for ways of “crossing the boundary between the actor-as-a-character and actor-as-human-being” as well as exploring the relations between the actor and spectator, understood in a similarly dualistic manner. Gogol’s language is therefore at the service of Vyrypaev’s attempts to both investigate the reception of this writer’s work and to return to early theatrical conventions (regarded as obsolete) and initiate a dialogue between artists and spectators through experiencing the past.

Obscena i nieprzyzwoitość w natarciu?

Author(s): Grzegorz Stępniak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 114/2013

The artists from NEA 4, who became known in the nineties for their refusal to compromise, raised issues, over the course of four performances given at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in California (27-28 IX 2012), relating to identity, censoring and aggression as well as the brutal sanctioning of cultural and social norms. Stępniak, on investigating the performers’ strategies, notes that these days the most dominant features in the group’s projects are snippets from popular culture devoid of the political potential that characterised the art of the “NEA Four” a decade ago.

Sztuka dialogu

Author(s): Marta Seredyńska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 114/2013

A review of two dance theatre reviews: the International Dance Theatres Festival in Lublin (6-11 XI 2012) and Polish Dance Platform in Poznań (6-9 XII 2012). Although the Lublin festival was concentrated around the legendary figure of choreographer Merce Cunningham, the programme also contained several Polish shows. By contrast, Polish Dance Platform, which only presented homegrown productions and also featured a conference and organised meetings, resembled an international fair during which Polish dance became an export commodity.

Do rozpuku

Author(s): Anna Róża Burzyńska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 114/2013

The author reviews a trilogy of Molière plays staged at Berlin’s Volksbühne, comprising: The Imaginary Invalid, directed by Martin Wuttke (prem: I VI 2012), The Miser, directed by Frank Castorf (prem: 14 VI 2012) and Don Juan, directed and scripted by René Pollesch (prem: 15 IX 2012). Castorf and the directors associated with his approach to theatre investigate the space of freedom stretched between “what we desire or appear to be (to ourselves and others) on a symbolic and conceptual level and what we actually are”. This is the space within which disappointment and embarrassment are born. These three adaptations are also united by the cast (the creator of all three main roles is Martin Wuttke), as well as “the three most fundamental themes: death, money and love”.

Od bycia przede wszystkim widzem nie umiem się uwolnić. Z Joanną Leśnierowską rozmawia Jadwiga Majewska

Author(s): Jadwiga Majewska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 114/2013

The discussion relates to Joanna Leśnierowska’s entire professional oeuvre: as a choreographer, playwright and critic/curator. A myriad of artistic and professional perspectives and experiences have enabled Leśnierowska to propose her own vision of contemporary dance at the Old Brewery New Dance in Poznań. The curator sums up eight years of working at the Brewery, at which she has not only provided patronage for individual undertakings, but also for the comprehensive design of the space.

„Ja jestem prosty człowiek, lubię, gdy jestem częścią czegoś”

Author(s): Waldemar Rapior / Language(s): Polish Issue: 114/2013

This text was created on the basis of research involving the participation of people who do not have regular contact with cultural institutions, which was carried out thanks to the cooperation of the Malta Foundation and the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. Those participating in the group interviews took part in discussions on plays watched in Malta. The author starts by describing the nature of the research, in order to respond to the question of who the spectator actually is and to investigate the method by which the spectator is perceived by the following theatre directors: Rabiha Mroué, Stefan Kaegi and Wojtek Ziemilski. By way of summary, he claims that “by adopting such a definition of spectator, we are also accepting a specific definition of human being”.

Litania mody

Author(s): Katarzyna Lemańska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 114/2013

The Mythologies production (the Polski Theatre in Wrocław, prem: 9 II 2013) created by Paweł Światek (direction) and Tomasz Jękot (script) combines a verbose academic lecture with theatricalised fashion shows. The text is inspired by Roland Barthes’ Mythologies and is based on a loose juxtaposition of two themes: John Paul II’s funeral and modelling, treated as examples of modern myths. The author expresses reservations not only toward the text, but to the play’s rhythm. Contrary to what was promised beforehand, Mythologies fails to provoke any change in the definition of mythology proposed by Barthes, for “the only thing that the artists managed to highlight (especially at the end) was the fact that in a post-ethical society, similar themes are of no concern to anybody any more”.

Ocalić Makbeta

Author(s): Mateusz Borowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 63/2004

Bardzo krótko współczesny

Author(s): Piotr Gruszczyński / Language(s): Polish Issue: 63/2004

Interview with Krzysztof Warlikowski.

Wawel na mnie nie działa

Author(s): Piotr Gruszczyński / Language(s): Polish Issue: 63/2004

Interview with Jan Klata