Ožiljci historije na novom licu

Author(s): Mustafa Alendar / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 1/2009

Masovni mediji se nisu pojavili sami od sebe. Mi smo ih pozvali, razvijajući tehnologiju u skladu sa našim raznolikim odlukama vezanim za svakodnevni život. Dobili smo tako masovno oruđe komunikacije koje brzo, kratko i na mnogo adresa prenosi ili posreduje poruku. Poželjeli smo da nam u životu treba “jednodnevni bestseler" Masovni mediji su stigli sa pojavom štampe početkom XVII vijeka, u okrilju demokratskog načina uređenja društva; postavši njegovom glavnom uzdanicom. Oni su prvo masovno rasadište javnog mišljenja, sa stalnim zadatkom distribuisanja informacija, kontrole vlasti i stvaranja opšteg konsenzusa. Masovni mediji u BiH su, tokom svoga razvoja, od prve štampe preko državnih i privatnih televizija i novih medija krajem ‘90. prošlog vijeka, stalno kasnili po jedan korak na tehnološkom planu, pokazujući sposobnost da nadoknade zaostatak i uhvate tehnološki priključak. Ipak, naše prvo tragično izvještavanje iz parlamenta, bosanskog Sabora iz 1910. još uvijek stoji kao zlokobna mitološka hipoteka, koja uvijek iznova stiže na naplatu.

Ostalgiija i politike sjećanja u Istočnoj Njemačkoj

Author(s): Dominic Boyer / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 1/2009

Uz dosadašnju estetsku misao

Author(s): Žarko Ratković / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 1/2009

Bosna i Hercegovina - država bez principa i građana

Author(s): Asim Mujkić / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 1/2009

Sadržaj

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 1/2009

„Domowe cztery kąty, piec piąty i teatr szósty”

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

A review of Impressions and Memoirs of a Young Theatregoer (Kraków 2012) – the notes of Elżbieta Kietlińska, published by the Jagiellonian Library and Academic Bookshop. By referring to the introduction written by Jan Michalik (who also prepared the manuscripts for this edition), Targoń helps readers to gain a fuller appreciation of the biography of an author who lived in Kraków around the turn of the 20th century (the notes begin in 1894 and finish in 1919; they are complemented by a commentary completed in the 1940s). This book, as Targoń notes, can be read in several ways: as source material for the history of theatre, “as a depiction of the tastes and needs of an ordinary Cracovian spectator” combining love for the theatre with soberness of judgement or “as a depiction of the day to day concerns of a Cracovian theatregoer”.

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”.

Szekspir ówczesny

Author(s): Tomasz Kowalski / Language(s): English Issue: 114/2013

The curators of the Shakespeare: Staging the World exhibition (at the British Museum in London, 19 VII – 25 XI 2012), Jonathan Bate and Dora Thornton, made the exposition’s leitmotif “Soul of the Age”, drawing attention to the contextual realities of Shakespeare’s epoch, which became part of his plays. The exhibition was divided into several sections: London during the writer’s day, the reign of Elizabeth I and the Tudors, Shakespeare’s Roman tragedies and individual plays. Designing the exposition in this manner enabled it to achieve the aim set by its organisers: “to inform the wider public about important historical, moral and social phenomena, previously familiar almost exclusively to specialists, which William Shakespeare’s oeuvre mirrored and from which it grew.

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.

O cierpieniu zwierząt. Thriller moralny czy zagadka metafizyczna?

Author(s): Monika Świerkosz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 114/2013

A review of The Valley, a play directed by Agnieszka Olsten (the Contemporary Theatre in Wrocław, prem: 9 III 2013) and based on Olga Tokarczuk’s novel Drive Your Plough over the Bones of the Dead. Świerkosz opines that the play is a not a reconstruction of the appeal contained in Tokarczuk’s “moral thriller” that humans should rethink their relationship with animals, but instead an attempt to implement this appeal using the means at a theatre’s disposal. It worked out this way due to three dogs being invited to appear in the production. However, in Świerkosz’ view, the language in the production comes too close to sounding like a superficial manifesto, thus squandering the opportunity to make the most of the critical potential and tension-filled atmosphere of the novel.

Prawda tkwi w szczegółach

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

A review of two plays based on Svietlana Alexievich’s book Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster: Czernobyl. Last minute, directed by Agnieszka Korytkowska-Mazur (the Dramatyczny Theatre in Białystok, prem: 2 III 2013) and Chernobyl Prayer, directed by Joanna Szczepkowska (the Studio Theatre in Warsaw, prem: 8 III 2013). The author notes that at the heart of both plays lies the conviction that the most vital motif in Alexevich’s reportage “arises from the reciprocal relationship between stage and audience”. Nevertheless, in Tomaszewska’s view, only the creators of the Warsaw play successfully became “advocates for the forgotten, marginalized victims”. The audience at the Czernobyl. Last minute production easily maintained a safe distance from the onstage events, because, in the final reckoning, these events were of no concern to them.

Złe spojrzenie widza

Author(s): Jakub Papuczys / Language(s): Polish Issue: 114/2013

Agnieszka Jakimiak’s Provincial Artists, directed by Weronika Szczawińska (Powszechny Theatre in Łódź, prem: 8 III 2013), as the author of this review claims, alludes quite freely to Agnieszka Holland’s film. The production concerns itself with theatre, but does not deal with it within the framework of a wider socio-political story with a plot. It could be likened instead to loose musical variations. The form of this production forces a modicum of creative labour on the spectators, who are meant to expand on the production according to their independent inclinations, as well as highlighting that the spectator issue is extremely important in theatre and should be the point of departure for any postulates, discussion or discourse.

All is Full of Love. Noise w przestrzeni społecznej i intymnej

Author(s): Justyna Stasiowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 114/2013

The author takes up the subject of noise in a short historical introduction to sound composition and the materiality of instruments, following the example set by Lugio Russolo’s manifesto L’arte dei rumori. She notes that noise is a widely recognized phenomenon, though it has not been fully theoreticized. Stasiowska provides various definitions and examples of how noise acts on the listener and their senses. The author sums up as follows: “So noise exists as a strategy for amplifying undesired elements. Being confronted by a multiplicity of grating sounds forces us to contemplate what are regarded as errors, or fixed perceptual structures”.

Opisać teatr krakowa ubiegłego dwudziestolecia

Author(s): Agnieszka Marszałek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 114/2013

A review of Diana Poskuta-Włodek’s book A History of Theatre in Kraków,1918-1939. The Professional Drama Theatres – the next part of the “History of Theatre in Kraków” series (Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków 2012). Marszałek notes that Poskuta-Włodek describes the functioning of the theatres of this period in a manner that highlights the dependence of art-related facts on the political, social and financial contexts within which they were appearing. So the book begins with a profile of the organisation of theatrical institutions, which the author of the review describes as leaving an “almost tangible whiff of sensation”. The portraits of theatre actors are very complex and include profiles of their earlier work, their personality traits and their predilections. Another of the book’s advantages is its casual, witty and colourful style.

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.