Monika Kwaśniewska: …Although You Were No Soldier
A review of Hamlet directed by Jan Klata at the Schauspielhaus in Bochum (premiere: 9.03.2013). The author sees Hamlet as an artist in this performance. The court, on the other hand, is chiefly a stage, though not always in the purely theatrical sense. As such, one of the main themes of the play is the artist's approach to reality. This issue concerns both social and political art, and the public game in which artists are entangled. This dual perspective appears to generate the existence of two audiences. The first is the imaginary audience, those for whom the figures create their "media" images. The second is the theater audience, to whom more is revealed.
Good Night, Sweet Prince: Piotr Gruszczyński speaks with Jan Klata
The most important stages in Klata's career – the beginning of his career as a theater director and his becoming head of the Stary Theater in Krakow – are tied to the staging of a Shakespearean drama: H. at the Gdańsk Shipyard and Hamlet at the Schauspielhaus Bochum. This interview held after the German premiere reflects on both productions and the beginnings of Klata's stint as director of the Stary Theater. Seemingly disparate subjects come together – they illuminate the new role Klata has taken in the theater. the conversation about the German play leads to Klata's artistic program planned for the upcoming five seasons in Krakow.
Nina Tecklenburg: Enchanted Reality, Mediated Contact. The Gob Squad Story
Nina Tecklenburg analyzes and characterizes the Gob Squad projects of the past eighteen years: "Gob Squad's performances accentuate the entanglement of everyday life in what is mediated, virtual, and fantastical,” achieving a hyper-realistic effect they call "exaggerating life.” Tecklenburg also notes that the critical aspect of this theater is no obstacle to entertainment, pop culture, and participation. She does claim, however, that in the face of changes that have transpired in recent years – in particular the financial crisis – Gob Squad has to rethink how they function.
Theater and Risk: Konrad Wojnowski speaks with Sarah Thom and Simon Will
Gob Squad members Sarah Thom and Simon Will claim that the seven-person collective of performers makes projects concerning solitude. The process of creating the play is important, beginning with defining the framework and establishing the relationship between viewer and performer. The collective thus stresses the building of bonds, and a sense of community, which demands a great deal of exertion and involvement from the performers. In their most recent projects the performers try to exploit themselves less as actors, though they continue to explore similar situations. They have returned to site-specific performances, mixing and remixing other theatrical forms. As they themselves claim, failure is inscribed in their projects, which is a "part of the process, and as such, absolutely necessary.”
Thomas Irmer: What's Missing Here?
Irmer claims that the first dance performance by Gob Squad – Dancing About (Volksbühne am Rosa Luxemburg Platz in Berlin, premiere: 8.11.2012) – is actually a return to the group's earlier preoccupations. The author draws attention to the interesting function of the dead insect in the play, symbolizing the idea of the play: "There is something very expressive in the fact that tiny praying mantis appears – expanded to the size of a vast picture – […] as a symbolic animal who appears to speak, act, and even pray with the other performers.” Irmer ultimately opines, however, that "in a little under ninety minutes the performance has little more to offer than theatrical experiments that were fashionable fifteen years back in clubs."
Dorota Jarecka: Oskar Dawicki – The Limitless Artist
Translating Leszek Kołakowski's distinction between extensive and functional philosophy into the sphere of art, Jarecka claims: "One cannot be an orthodox functionalist, but one can be a stubborn, an unrelenting, or even an unbearable functionalist. One such artist is Oskar Dawicki.” She supports her argument by listing the attributes of his work: "He is unpredictable in the range of topics he tackles, undefinable in terms of his method. Wherever he appears, all extension is undermined.” Next, Jarecka describes and analyzes performances, installations, notes, and films by Dawicki, indicating the main subjects of his work, such as community, disturbance, and the economic and ideological mechanisms that determine an artist's work.
A Compelling Game That Blends Fiction and Reality. Piotr Kosiewski speaks with Oskar Dawicki
In speaking of his work on Performer, Dawicki says that film is the finest tool for modeling reality. He then explains his relationship to neo-avant-garde art, stating that he is most interested in the issue of freedom of lifestyle behind the iron curtain. Speaking of his education and interest in performance, Dawicki stresses the impact that Zbigniew Warpechowski had on him. The artist also defines his relationship with art institutions and curators. The main subject of the conversation, however, is the process of mixing fiction and reality, wherein Dawicki has made himself the object of creativity. "I try to see my situation as more amusing than terrifying,” he sums up.
Joanna Jopek: The Practice of Failure: Attempts at Negative Performativity
Jopek surveys the sphere of the negative that stretches beyond theories of performativity, drawing from the "low" theory of Judith Halberstam. Drawing from various artistic practices (Oskar Dawicki's untitled "performance," Hello by Joanna Rajkowska, Magic Cap byCezary Bodzianowski) leads the author to define research perspectives known as negative performativity, in whose framework Jopek "reveals the site of the anti-political critical potential of failure.”
Judith Halberstam: Weak Theory
A fragment from the book The Queer Art of Failure byJudith Halberstam. The author demands a reappraisal of the dominant standards of success and failure. As such, the researcher demonstrates the potential for failure, conceived as a result of work that exists outside of the mainstream. Describing the functioning of universities from this angle, Halberstam responds to a postulate of Michael Foucault's, to "return to issues that only superficially seem familiar and resolved.” In her book this "takes the form of using kinds of knowledge that 'contradict logic,' of admiring failure and stupidity.” Halberstam thus speaks up for a "weak theory," searching for proof in pop culture (mainly through analysis of animated films) in relationship to queer ways of living, gender theory, and sexuality.
Bojana Kunst: How Time Can Be Dispossessed: Of Stillness and Movement in Contemporary Performance
Describing the performance Ballettikka Stattika byIgor Štromajer and Brane Zorman, as well as NVSB, a dance performance by Eszter Salamon, Bojana Kunst analyzes situations in which stillness is linked with the dispossession of the subject. The art she describes throws our sense of temporal organization into doubt, reflecting the changing dynamic of our contemporary experience of time, thematizing the economic relationship between investment time and consumption time, or lead to the redundancy of time, as a result of which stillness does not stimulate our attention. Kunst therefore puts forward the thesis that stillness can be culturally subversive, as it "reveals how deeply our internal sense of time is socially constructed and economically conditioned."
Konrad Wojnowski: The Performativity of Catastrophes: The WTC
The author puts forward the thesis that two and a half thousand years after Aeschylus we are still trying to understand and present catastrophes in the categories of drama and the protagonists it typically contains; we create coherent tales about catastrophes, divided into acts, based on strict formal requirements, making natural catastrophes human (or humanist) phenomena. He tries to look at the theatrification of the catastrophe by using theories of performativity, thus wiping out the border between what is natural in a catastrophe and what is strictly human. Thus outlining his methodological framework, he proceeds to analyze the catastrophe that was made into the first great tragedy of the 21st century, the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
Marcin Kościelniak: The Embarrassing Performance of the Losers. The Anti-history of the Political Theater
The author considers anti-history projects in recent Polish theater. He describes three projects (by Paweł Demirski and Monika Strzępka, Jolanta Janiczak and Wiktor Rubin, and Marcin Cecko and Krzysztof Garbaczewski). Outlining them in brief, he presents their methods and strategies, inquiring into the expressions of subjectivity that emerge, distinguishing three models of anti-historical writing for the stage. In the author's view, "In our day, theatrical anti-historical projects realize the postulate of political art in the most insightful manner, and create the most interesting and vital movement in Polish theater.”
Monika Świerkosz: In the Meanderings of the National Genealogy
A review of the play A Pictorial Guide to the Polish Kings by Krzysztof Garbaczewski at the Stary Theater in Krakow (premiere: 23.03.2013). Świerkosz draws from the creation and later functioning of a series of kings' portraits by Jan Matejko, alluded to by the creators of the play. Describing the plot and form, the critic claims that A Pictorial Guide to the Polish Kings is more than another play about the "Polish soul." It more speaks of the obligation to create genealogical continuity, which legitimizes access to power. The performance, therefore, in the authors opinion, is a mocking dialogue with the tradition of how power is represented.
Katarzyna Lemańska: For Adults Only
In Catherine the Empress (Stefan Żeromski Theater in Kielce, premiere: 13.04.2013) by Wiktor Rubin and Jolanta Janiczak, the story of Catherine the Great is a pretext for reflecting upon physicality and sexuality woven in a web of political significance. The play is told from the perspective of the titular protagonist, formulating her own language and considering her own physicality. The author criticizes the creators' inconsistency in giving the floor to the male protagonist at the conclusion, and the dramaturgy of the play (built on the fragmentary personal history of the Empress) for ultimately being based on the chronology of events – from the Empress's seizure of the throne to the decision to partition Poland. This novel interpretation of the Empress's life, according to Janiczak, thus becomes "a component of the traditional mechanisms of history."
My Space, My Place, My Theater
A transcript of the Jerzy Grzegorzewski and His Theater symposium, held from 17-18 March, 1995 at the Center for the Research of Jerzy Grotowski's Work and Theatrical-Cultural Explorations in Wrocław. As Maryla Zielińska, who edited this materials, mentions in the introduction, this is "the only meeting of its kind, in which Jerzy Grzegorzewski took part and spoke of himself so openly.” The point of departure is his direction of the Polski Theater in Wrocław: the director describes both his work as an artist, and addresses the issue of the institutional function of the theater in the 1970s. The director also speaks of his theatrical debut in the student theater, of his work abroad, and his relationship with Tadeusz Różewicz; he describes the film based on Gombrowicz's Operetta, and sets forth his relationship with theater criticism.
Anna Bajor-Ciciliati: Grupo Corpo – The Body in its Pure State
The author presents the genesis and development of the Brazilian dance theater Grupo Corpo founded by Rodrigo Pederneiras. Bajor-Ciciliati reviews all of the plays created by the group, situating them in the broader Brazilian context, indicating the innovation and radical formal strategies of their work. It is in their plays that, for the first time in the Brazilian history of dance, the classical style has been crossed with elements of pop culture, and the uniquely Brazilian erotic body language has been shifted to the foreground. The description of the performances shows us that all the elements of the Brazilian imaginarium can be found in the company's work, which is why the author believes that in making a national style the main source of his artistic expression, Pederneiras has defined the Brazilian identity in the context of contemporary dance.
Eliane Robert Moraes: The Lyrical Mechanics of the Body
The author briefly attempts to characterize the main attributes of the choreographic style of Grupo Corpo, whose leader and creator is Rodrigo Pederneiras. Their dance is the opposite of showy, dynamic acrobatics, more focusing on attaching the dancer's body "to the earth" through situating its point of gravity at the hips. The movement of the dancer constantly resists this "oppressive" power of gravity, making a creative tension in the subtle balance between the movement from the center of the body and gravity. The group's dance style is closer to everyday, "low" behavior, associated with street theater, than to "traditional" dance, and in particular to classical ballet.
Marta Rita Kehl: Rags from the Clouds
The author notes that the main organizing factor in the dance plays of Grupo Corpo is rhythm. Two lines of analysis follow: one exploring the "Brazilian" character of the group's work, the other leading to the motif of sexuality. These paths, explored with the help of psychoanalysis, intersect in the process of sublimation, while the author states that sexuality, which is commercialized and almost ubiquitous in Brazilian society, is harnessed and sublimated in dance.
Marco Giannotti: Reflections on the Body and Space
The author interprets the plays of Grupo Corpo in terms of the artistic creation of spatial solutions and the integration of space and the movement of the actors' living bodies. In Giannotti's view, these two factors are based on creatively combining the ideas of Neoclassicism and the Baroque. In Benguelê? the classical linear concept, though inalienable, appears to indicate a new vision of space. O Corpo, in turn, is thought to inquire into whether the Neoclassical style can be applied to the contradictions of modern times, or whether one can locate the ideal gesture in a fractured world.
Katarzyna Fazan: Barbara Wysocka – Reflecting the Piano through Acting. A Study on the Theatrical Caprices of Michał Zadara
A text on Michał Zadara's Chopin Minus the Piano project (GAP Arts Agency, premiere: 23.03.2013 at the J. Słowacki Theater in Krakow), in which the piano part in Chopin's e-minor op. 11 and f-minor op. 21 concerti is replaced by a text read by Barbara Wysocka. Fazan describes Wysocka's impressive, fine-tuned expression, and indicates the many layers of the script, in which a theoretical and musicological lecture is rooted in an experience. Through the introduction of subjects from Chopin's life, it also becomes a staged biography of the artist, contrasted with a national and cultural perspective. The play also includes aspects of a manifesto, seeking to debunk the popular reception of the Romantic artist.
Agata Łuksza: A Chorus Laced with Broniewski
A review of the play Requiemmachine based on texts by Władysław Broniewski, directed by Marta Górnicka (Theater Institute in Warsaw, premiere: 24.03.2013). Górnicka uses the structure of the chorus to critically reflect upon the neo-liberal labor model, based on strategies which turn us into an "army of worker robots.” Łuksza compares the new production with earlier works by Górnicka (The Chorus Speaking and Magnificat), claiming that the Chorus of Women has been replaced by a "male" chorus, manifesting manhood in a crisis. Nonetheless, she opines that the strength of the chorus was weakened. To her mind, the most important reason for this weakness is the dominant role of the texts and figure of Broniewski, causing the collective subject to shift into the background.
"I Sing the Body Electric”: Justyna Stasiowska speaks with Marta Górnicka
Marta Górnicka speaks of her concept of a chorus of individuals in Chorus of Women and Requiemmachine. She calls the language applied in her plays speech cleansed of psychological content, recalling the sound of a computer or machine. The director speaks of the process of creating the chorus and the work on creating a new actor/performer through training during rehearsal. Górnicka also speaks of the process by which the libretti for her plays were created, emphasizing that the dramaturgy always emerges from the subject she chooses. She also repeats that the dismemberment of language in her plays is primarily meant to mobilize their critical dimension.
Tomasz Biernacki: Bernhard Lang – Theater of Repetitions
The author describes the work of Austrian composer Bernhard Lang in the context of Gilles Deleuze's thoughts on aesthetics. In his first musical/theatrical work, Theater der Wiederholungen (Theater of Repetitions, 2002), Lang literally tried to translate the multiplicity and complexity of the notions of Difference and Repetition into the medium of music. Lang joins Deleuze in opposing the theater of repetitions – the theater of representation, generating dichotomous divisions between the ideal and the imperfect or imitative. Lang is guided by the conviction that "all that exists is only all-encompassing Difference, which is the basic principle of existence and further repetitions of this differentiating principle, generating further Differences.”
Marcin Bogucki: Shock Therapy
An article on the play Winter's Journey directed by Maja Kleczewska (Polski Theater in Bydgoszcz – premiere: 23.04.2013, Powszechny Theater in Łódź – premiere: 23.03.2013). Bogucki notes that Kleczewska and Łukasz Chotkowski (dramaturg) perceive Jelinek as an "intellectual terrorist," thus dismissing the irony and comedy in her text and focusing on the gravity, even the pathos of the accusations. The acting also serves this end, described by Bogucki as spastic, with grotesque animal costumes and masks to deform the faces, and a small space surrounded by mirrors creating close contact between the viewers and the actors, who "assault" them with their physicality. As a result, the "response to the sick world presented by Kleczewska more resembles withdrawal than involvement or identification."
Karolina Bikont: A Life Unlived
During the conference on 24.04 at the Polski Theater in Bydgoszcz, Karolina Bikont, translator of Elfriede Jelinek's Winter's Journey, spoke of her involvement in the process of the play's creation. Even if some fragments of the text did not become part of the final performance, they functioned on a meta-textual level (when words were lost in the translation, they still existed in the memories of the translator, dramaturg, and director), ensuring that the text was always alive. The translator encourages us not to interpret Jelinek with academic theories, as her texts ought, above all, to be "let inside of us and digested for as long as possible." This reading based on meditation allows us (both the readers and the creators of the play) to better understand the work of this Austrian author.
Agnieszka Rataj: Information – And What Next?
A review of a students' graduation performance from the Wrocław branch of the PWST Theater School, Love & Information, directed by Monika Strzępka (premiere: 23.03.2013). Rataj describes the structure of the text, which, upon closer reading, reveal itself to be a network map "reflecting the everyday process of surfing the Net.” Both the text and the performance provide portraits of people for whom the process of transferring information, recalling and replicating have become the basis of existence. The author stresses, however, that at the heart of the play are the actors, who coped splendidly with the difficult task of "inscribing the concrete in Churchill's transparent text, reading it with their own sensitivities, and adding what was between the lines."
Paweł Schreiber: Machinations
A review of The Crazy Locomotive: A Dramatic Opera, based on a text by Stanisław Witkacy, directed by Michał Zadara (Polski Theater in Bydgoszcz, premiere: 13.04.2013). Schreiber claims that Zadara's play has been dominated by machines: an electric railroad, cameras and screens, theft detectors. "This is not only about suggesting that a machine hides behind the play, but about building a play that is a machine,” writes Schreiber. As such, the play is a successful formal experiment. In terms of its subject, however, it would seem anachronistic, however, because Zadara makes no attempt to update Witkacy's text, in which the symbol of civilization is the steam engine.
Katarzyna Waligóra: Morrison post mortem
A review of the play Morrison/Śmiercisyn directed by Paweł Passini (Opole Theater of Puppets and Actors, premiere: 23.02.2013). The play begins at the moment of Jim Morrison's death. There is no attempt to give viewers Morrison's biography, though allusions are constant. Apart from the real figures and events, numerous intertextual links are made. The main motif of this performance, which "oscillates around the protagonists' conflicting desires and fantasies," is excess. And although not all the aspects of the staging are equally successful, Waligóra writes that Passini's play does not leave the viewer indifferent.
Karolina Leszczyńska: La Belle Époque in Shorthand
A review of a performance made based on Tadeusz Słobodzianek's text Young Stalin: A Probable History in Seven Images (Dramatyczny Theater in Warsaw, premiere: 6.04.2013) directed by Ondrej Spišák. The author writes that the creators of the play have not managed to say anything new about Stalin, nor about totalitarianism as such. The protagonist disappears in an extremely expansive historio-cultural context. The excess of contexts is not linked by an overriding concept to link all the episodes. The historical and ideological backgrounds of emerging Bolshevism are treated as slogans, and the characters are reduced to types. The play reinforces stereotypes with images encoded in the collective unconscious.
Friederike Felbeck: Medals, Blood, and Silence
A review of the play War Has Nothing Feminine about It based on reportage by Svetlana Alexyevich, which Michał Borczuch directed for the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus (premiere: 21.12.2012). Felbeck notes that this play, presenting the experiences of women fighting in the Red Army, serves as a pretext for discussing the everyday reality of war as recalled by women. Borczuch introduces a woman into the play who transforms from the alter ego of the author to a therapist. The script bypasses the most graphic fragments of the novel, preferring to focus on "the process by which recollections are uncovered after decades of silence.”
Piotr Kosiewski: Naked Men
The Viennese exhibition Nackte Männer von 1800 bis heute at the Leopold Museum (19.10-3.03.2013) is devoted to the tradition of representing the male nude in art from the late 18th century to the present. The author agrees with the curators of the exhibition (Tobias G. Natter and Elisabeth Leopold) that the history of the nude can help us speak about ways of constructing identity in the context of ideological transformations. The curators of the exhibition have thus managed to show that the "body is a costume," which means that nudity in no way reveals what is hidden.
Maryla Zielińska: NYET! NYET! NYET!
Maryla Zielińska describes the Russian Case 2013 Festival, an overview of the best Russian performances of the year past. To the critic's mind, the most interesting movement on display in the festival is the dialogue between theater and Russian history, literature, and identity. Plays like Talagat Batalov's Uzbek or King Lear: A Comedy by the St. Petersburg group Priyut Komedyanta entered a subtle, though pointed dialogue with the past, presenting a subversive and unconventional vision of Russian tradition. In turn, the stream that spoke of the present included plays that drew from documentary theater.
Natalia Jakubowa: Gold Mask 2013. A Journey from "The Year I Wasn't Born" to "Now, Precisely Now”
The author critiques the categories into which the competing plays presented at the Gold Mask 2013 were divided. She proves the lack of a clear premise by describing the particular performances. In the "large forms” category was Untitled Play by Chekhov, directed by Yevgeni Marcelle, and The Year I Wasn't Born byKonstantin Bogomolov;in the "small forms" category, August: The Duchy Osage directed by Marat Gatzalov, Konstantin Bogomolov's King Lear: A Comedy, Idiots from the Country by Mikhail Bychkov, and Teatr.doc's Two in Your Home; while the "experimental" category featured Uzbek byTalgat Batalov as well as Story of a Soldier choreographed by Guy Weizman and Roni Haver.
Aleksandra Konopko: Personal Ties
A report from the Monosituations series organized by the Jerzy Grotowski Institute in Wrocław between 1 February and 16 March. A pride of place was given to physical theater performances, including three productions by the Matejka Studio: Alexandra Kazazou's Charmpolypi,Gema Galiana's The Woman Decomposed, and Awkward Happiness or Everything I Don’ t Remember About Meeting You directed by Matej Matejka and Bryan Brown. On the opposite side of things was the multimedia play by Janek Turkowski, Margarete, which is described in detail by Konopko.
Olga Katafiasz: Let's Play
A report on Berlin Day at the Counterpoint Festival. Katafiasz reviews two plays: Notizen aus der Küche by Rodrigo Garcia, rendered for stage by Patrick Wengenroth, and Sklaven. Einakter von Georges Courteline aus de Hölle der bürgerlichen Freiheit directed by Andreas Kriegenburg. The author takes a critical approach to the plays, claiming that although they appeal to "other viewing needs and viewers of various sensitivities, ultimately they fulfill a similar task: to provide elegant, bourgeois, and safe, conventional entertainment.”
Erika Fischer-Lichte: Theatrology – What Is It and Why Study It?
The author presents the history of the creation and development of theatrology as a field of study, situating it in a range of cultural transformations that took place in the early 20th century. She also mentions definitions of "performance" and "theatricality," recalling, among others, the theories of Max Herrmann, Edward Gordon Craig, Richard Schechner, and Nikolai Yevreinov. Fischer-Lichte also outlines the process of analyzing a theater performance and the capabilities and methods of researching theater history. In response to the title's second question, she states: "Researching an art performance from various points of view and posing various questions, [theatrology] thus allows us to describe […] the theater of human life.”
Joanna Walaszek: Learning from the Master
Describing the most recent work by Erika Fischer-Lichte to be translated into Polish (Theater and Theatrology: The Basic Questions, published by the Grotowski Institute in Wrocław, 2012), Joanna Walaszek points out that this is not an academic handbook in the traditional sense of the term. Its aim is not to gather and systematize knowledge on theater and theatrology, nor does it present an analysis of the basic qualities of a theatrical work. It is an individual handbook in which Fischer-Lichte shares her knowledge, and theatrical and teaching experience.
Monika Pasiecznik: The Dramaturgy of Music
A review of a book by Łukasz Grabuś, Lethal Forms: A Few Dramaturgical Strategies in Contemporary Opera (Księgarnia Akademicka, Krakow 2012). Pasiecznik writes that the publication "provides a detailed outline of the context for the development of innovative musical and theatrical forms in the 20th century.” Grabuś also introduces the concept of the dramaturgy of music, unknown in Poland, which "embraces all the acoustic, visual, musical, rhetorical, and dynamic aspects of the play.” The lethal opera of the title pertains to the category of negativity, in whose framework the secret, marginalized, and imperceptible becomes of interest.
Marta Uszyńska: William "Live Preserver" Shakespeare
A review of Olga Katafiasz's book Shakespeare and the Cinema: Adaptation Strategies and Their Socio-cultural Contexts (PWST, Krakow 2012). The author points out the originality of the premises and Katafiasz's research methods (of which there are as many as there are films analyzed), analyzing the films by entering a dialogue with Shakespeare's work. She takes as her compasses the intuitive thoughts of Harold Bloom and Peter Brook on the phenomenon of Shakespeare's "energy." Uszyńska focuses on what she sees as the most interesting chapters: the first (on Midsummer Night's Dream by Maks Reinhardt and William Dieterle in 1935) and the last (describing two versions of the comedy To Be or Not to Be – by Ernst Lubitsch in 1941 and Alan Johnson in 1983).
Katarzyna Fazan: Seven Ideas for Space
Katarzyna Fazan outlines David Wiles's Brief History of Theater Spaces (Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, Warsaw 2012), writing that the author combines the grasp of a researcher examining the history of the theater with modern methodological tools and the experience of a participant in various stage and performance events. Wiles notes that forms of space do not die off, they only evolve. Meanwhile, he sees the forms of topography and the character of architecture as a consequence of socio-political decisions, and only thereafter aesthetic ones. |