Joanna Jopek. Revolutions vs. Participations. Participatory strategies and performative tactics in the Greater Poland: Revolutions project.
The article sums up theproject Greater Poland: Revolutions, initiated by curator Agata Siwiak. The author describes projects led by Wiktor Rubin, Mikołaj Mikołajczyk and Michał Borczuch, all of whom usually work in repertory theatres in bigger cities, and this time have been invited to provincial towns of the Greater Poland Voivodeship in order to cooperate with amateurs in the places where they live or work, such as an orphanage, a nursing home or a fire station. These projects, placing the artist as an alien in a small community, made it possible to conduct a cultural exchange between the two parties and go beyond the usual standards of the theatre.
Joanna Jopek. The expropriated spectator. Subversive play with the audience's passivity in Krzysztof Garbaczewski's theatre.
Joanna Jopek writes about the reception of Krzysztof Garbaczewski's performances. The author wonders why his work, despite his great sensitivity towards the audience's needs, causes a lot of controversy or becomes rejected altogether. Jopek analyses three performances she considers to be the most characteristic, based on the work of Witold Gombrowicz: The Possessed (2008), Ivona, Princess of Burgundia (2012) and Kronos (2013). Jopek bases her reflection on the „expropriated spectator” predominantly on the ideas of Jacques Rancière and Bojana Kunst.
Joanna Jopek. The factory of the real. Film and television in Krzysztof Garbaczewski's theatre
Joanna Jopek analyses two performances by Krzysztof Garbaczewski – The Death Star (2010) from Wałbrzych and Kronos (2013) from Wrocław, focusing on their use of film. Referring to the work of Philip Auslander and Bojana Kunst, she emphasises the spatio-temporal connection between Garbaczewski's performances, as well as the question of authenticity and the experience of mediatisation. At the same time, she stresses the difference between the director's use of film and the productions of older artists: Grzegorz Jarzyna, Krzysztof Warlikowski or Krystian Lupa.
Karolina Wycisk. Mów/move. From neolinguistic poetry to a new language in drama
Karolina Wycisk writes about the plays of Marcin Cecko, an artist who deals not only with theatre, but with photography and performance as well. He is also one of the founders of the Warsaw neolinguistic poetic group. Using the examples of performances Cecko has created with director Krzysztof Garbaczewski – Balladyna, The Odyssey, The Sexual Life of Savages - Wycisk points out the main features of Cecko's texts: performativity, a large margin for actors' improvisation, use of puns, a disregard for plot and grammar. The author of the article also mentions the incessant transformations of his work, as he is unwilling to have it recorded or published. He thinks a text should undergo constant transformation – always remain in a state of flux.
Ewa Guderian-Czaplińska. We? The bourgeois?
Ewa Guderian-Czaplińska gives an account of the project We, the bourgeois, conducted at the Culture Centre ZAMEK in Poznań. The originator and curator of the project, Tomasz Plata, wanted to pose questions concerning the nature of the bourgeoisie and the emancipatory potential of the social formation called „neo-bourgeois”. Apart from three premieres(Jeżycjada: Field of Research by Weronika Szczawińska and Agnieszka Jakimiak, Tocqueville. Everyday Life after a Great Revolution by Komuna//Warszawa and Pygmalion by Wojtek Ziemilski and Rozalia Mierzicka), the three-month-long project also comprised film screenings, playwriting workshops led by Agnieszka Jakimiak, and lectures by Agata Bielik-Robson, Andrzej Leder and Jan Sowa.
Marcin Kościelniak. The Egotists. A different counterculture
Marcin Kościelniak analyses performances from the late 1960s and the 1970s, focusing in particular on the work of Helmut Kajzar, Krystian Lupa and Krzysztof Niemczyk. He also examines the work of their inheritors, working in the created in the 1980s. Using it as a basis, the author states that apart from the broadly accepted communal, strong historical narration focused on independence, functioning in the period 1968-1989, one can construct a feeble and ephemeric anti-historical narrative, whose protagonists would be artists deliberately working in the spirit of selfishness and protecting their individuality and privacy.
Beyond a common faith. Marcin Kościelniak interviews Krystian Lupa
In a conversation with Marcin Kościelniak, Krystian Lupa attempts to create a self-portrait in which the subjects concerning homosexuality mingle with questions of culture, creative work and politics, and a private narrative is interwoven with social phenomena. Lupa tells about the stages of discovering his own sexuality and his experiences as a young man; he points out the links between homosexuality and his work; he tells about the artistic and cultural milieux of the 60s and 70s, on whose fringes he moved; he describes how the situation of homosexuals changed after the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic; he also refers to his own present situation.
Grzegorz Stępniak. „Hit ‘Em All Up!”. Queer performance from Los Angeles in a struggle to change the world
Grzegorz Stępniak argues with Joanna Krakowska's text Osoby. Penny Arcade i nowojorska scena queerowa (Didaskalia nr 123). Taking as his point of depature a conflict between two hiphop record companies (Bad Boy Records and Death Row Records), and analysing various phenomena in the American context, the author aims to show changes taking place in queer studies during the recent years. His purpose is an attempt „to define new challenges facing queer studies and confronting them with performances from Los Angeles that perform not only sexual or gender-based, but also racial, class and geographical 'difference'”. His analysis focuses on the „Chicano-American” company Butchlalis de Panochtitlan and Vaginal Creme Davis.
Marek Kędzierski. Castellucci's autumn
The article discusses two pieces directed in the autumn of 2014 by Romeo Castellucci: the opera neither and the performance Go down, Moses. The author starts by describing Castellucci's mode of work and revealing the difficulties accompanying the creation of neither. Apart from detailed descriptions of the two productions and his interpretation, Kędzierski includes quotations and information taken from his interview with the director. Thus, two discourses meet in the article – that of the artist and that of the viewer.
Where images burn... Marek Kędzierski interviews Romeo Castellucci
The point of departure for the conversation is the premiere of the diptych Orpheus and Eurydice. The director tells about the origins of his ideas and his work on the project. However, he quickly moves on to attempts at explaining the key categories determining his thinking about theatre. He also talks about his creative development and twentieth-century artists (Rothko, Warhol, Beckett, Artaud) whose work and views have inspired him the most. Castellucci also tries to specify the role of the actor in his theatre and the place for his audience.
Dorota Semenowicz. Eurydice from the clinic in Vlezenbeek
The text is devoted to the opera dyptich Orpheus and Eurydice, directed by Romeo Castellucci and performed in Vienna (Wiener Festwochen, prem.: 11 May 2014) and Brussels (La Monnaie, prem.: 17 Jul 2014). The author gives a detailed description of the Belgian part of the project, but she also points out the similarities and differences in relation to the part produced in Austria. At the same time, Semenowicz places the performances in the broader context of Castellucci's earlier creative development, and makes numerous references to philosophy in describing the directing strategies. She particularly focuses on the ethical dimension of the performances.
Katarzyna Waligóra. No man’s land
Katarzyna Waligóra reviews The Rite of Spring directed by Romeo Castellucci (Ruhrtriennale, prem. 15 Aug 2014). The author enumerates the inversions of traditional models of thinking about theatre present in the performance. The most important of these is the gesture of substituting actors with machines suspended from stage barrels. The transgressions made in the production allow Castellucci to establish the machine as a non-normative actor, capable of displaying autonomous activity within the performance.
Freddie Rokem. The boundaries of logic: Antigone interpreted by Heidegger and Brecht
Basing on Aristotelian logic, Freddie Rokem undertakes an analysis of one of the best known and most inspiring plays in the world – Sophocles' Antigone. The author focues on the interpretation proposed by Martin Heidegger and the adaptation by Bertolt Brecht (both based on Hölderlin's translation). He also presents the circumstances in which both interpretations were born and their strong connection to the socio-political situation of Germany during the Second World War and right after its end. The author is particularly interested in syllogism and other logical structures in the speeches of the characters which define a human being in situations of conflict.
Mateusz Borowski, Małgorzata Sugiera. Structures and networks: from Antigone to ANT
The article is an attempt at a new reading of Sophocles' Antigone, based on the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) of Bruno Latour. The point of departure lies in Judith Butler's book Antigone's Claim, in which the author presents her own interpretation of the play, „criticising the canonical interpretations of Spohocles' work” created by Hegel, Lacan and Irigaray, and, at the same time, referring to contemporary socio-political problems. Like Butler, Borowski and Sugiera focus on the relationship of the protagonist with her family, offering, however, a new reading in the spirit of Latour's theory. They also look for similar models of relationships between characters in popular culture (i.a. in A Game of Thrones and the films Splice i Stoker) and in the so-called high culture (the opera The Name of Oedipus. The Song of a Forbidden Body, libretto: Hélène Cixous).
Agata Łuksza. „A Black” - but what does it mean?
A review of the performance The Blacks, directed by Iga Gańczarczyk on the basis of Jean Genet's play at the Polish Theatre in Bydgoszcz (prem.: 17 Jan 2015). The director put Genet's interventionist play within the conext of feminist discourse, and in this provocative way she was able to return this text – extremely difficult in terms of staging – to Polish theatre. In Gańczarczyk's interpretation feminist reflection merges with postcolonial thought, pointing at a similar scheme constructing gender and racial identity, similarly born in a „hall of social mirrors”.
Beata Guczalska. Stand-up comedy for the neurotic middle class
A review of the undivine comedy. I Will Tell God Everything, a performance based on Paweł Demirski's text, directed by Monika Strzępka at Stary Teatr in Cracow (prem.: 20 Dec 2014). The author points out three main themes of the performance, inspired by the life and work of Zygmunt Krasiński: anti-semitism, class struggle and family relationships. According to the reviewer, even though the language of Demirski's text is brilliant and ironic, it deals with well-known social phenomena that have been already described numerous times. Guczalska also reflects on finding „politically incorrect” ideas in classic masterpieces, in this case anti-semitism in Krasiński's play.
Paweł Schreiber.The stigmata of Elfriede Jelinek
Reviewing The Winter Journey, based on the text by Elfriede Jelinek anddirected by Paweł Miśkiewicz at the Polish Theatre in Wrocław (prem. 30 Oct 2014), Paweł Schreiber reflects on the problem of the „dramaturgy of vanishing”, noticed by Monika Szczepaniak in the Nobel Prize winner's writing. The author juxtaposes the Wrocław performance with Maja Kleczewska's version performed at the Polish Theatre in Bydgoszcz, as well as Philip K. Dick's novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. However, he devotes most of his attention to the idea of splitting the character of Elfriede Jelinek into five actresses, representing different generations, personalities and attitudes.
Natalia Brajner. „Stay, ruin, you are beautiful!”
The author reviews Detroit. History of the Hand, performed at the Polish Theatre in Bydgoszcz (prem.: 21 Dec 2014). The project, created by the director-playwright duo Wiktor Rubin and Jolanta Janiczak was inspired by the fresco Detroit Industry Murals by the Mexican artist Diego Rivera, and the history of Detroit in the twentieth and twenty first century. Brajner describes the stage space, strongly determining the reception of the performance. She also analyses the means creating the rhythm of the performance. Her main focus, however, is the fulfilment and downfall of the American dream.
Monika Kwaśniewska. I'm a ramshackle building, I'm uninhabited
A post-premiere commentary on Detroit. History of the Hand by Jolanta Janiczak and Wiktor Rubin at Teatr Polski in Bydgoszcz (prem.: 21 Dec 2014). The point of departure of the text is a vision of crisis and anarchy perceived as a moment of liberation from the compulsion to be useful to society and efficient within the capitalist economy. Analysing fragments and characters thetmatising the motif of the downfall of the city both in the text and the performance, Kwaśniewska claims that in Detroit... crisis is not a state to be suffered through and ultimately overcome on the way to restoration. It is a state that should be cultivated.
Aleksandra Haduła. Stardust memories
Aleksandra Haduła reviews Morphine – a performance directed by Ewelina Marciniak (Silesian Theatre, Katowice, prem: 8 Nov 2014) in the postindustrial space of the Wilson Shaft Gallery. Using Szczepan Twardoch's novel as a basis, together with playwright Jarosław Murawski, Marciniak created a mosaic of episodes arranged into a sequence of scenes-memories which – contrary to the literary source – constitute a seemingly drug-induced dream which allows to escape the wartime reality. The author notices that because of the irony and a skilful use of collective notions, the performance noticeably moves its focus from history to a sensual memory about an artificially constructed world of the past.
Natalia Jakubowa. Rituals of memory
The text refers to the performance The Hideout (directed by Paweł Passini, neTTheatre, prem.: 20 Sep 2014), whose protagonist is Irena Solska. It uses and transforms certain elements from the rich biography of the actress, which – according to the author – have become „a ritual of memory, not a representation of history” in the performance. It is shown in a flat rented especially for the occasion, referring to the one in which Solska lived during the war, hiding young Jewish women and illegally storing cotton for sale.
Mateusz Chaberski. The sleep-inducing beauty of Pope Lear
Mateusz Chaberski has an ambivalent opinion of King Lear directed by Jan Klata (Stary Teatr in Cracow, prem.: 19 Dec 2014). He claims that the potential of the director's idea – moving the plot to the Vatican, where Lear is the Pope, and his daughters become priests taking power – has not been fully exploited. The performance is incoherent and unfinished. It uses slogans and cliches instead of offering a suggestive commentary on the present social situation in Poland.
Katarzyna Niedurny. Margot's unfastened dress
Queen Margot. War Will End One Day, directed by Wojciech Faruga, created in cooperation with playwright Tomasz Jękot (Polish Theatre, Bielsko-Biała, prem.: 22 Nov 2014), is based on well-known historical events and characters linked to St. Bartholomew's Night, as well as their literary (Alexandre Dumas' novel) and motion picture (Patrice Chéreau's film) adaptations. The protagonist – Margaret de Valois – is shown as a very sensual person struggling to break free from prevalent conventions. The performance also stresses the role of her mother – Catherine de Medici – who becomes a symbolic figure of a cruel ruler. Another aspect of this production that the reviewer considers interesting is the creation of a so-called „different” history, inspired by well-known facts.
Natalia Brajner. Poniedziałek's menagerie
Natalia Brajner reviews Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, directed by Jacek Poniedziałek at Jan Kochanowski Theatre in Opole (prem.: 13 Sep 2014). The author focuses mainly on analysing the complicated family relationships emphasised by the creators of the performance. The review also discusses the autobiographical elements introduced by the director.
Katarzyna Waligóra. „How was it?”
Katarzyna Waligóra reviews three performances shown during the 7th Divine Comedy Theatre Festival (Cracow, 5-13 Dec 2014): Rats, directed by Maja Kleczewska (Teatr Powszechny, Warsaw, prem. 10 Jan 2015), Radosław Rychcik's Balladyna (Teatr im. Wandy Siemaszkowej Rzeszowie, prem. 12 Dec2 014) and Hideout directed by Paweł Passini (Centre for Culture in Lublin and neTTheatre, prem. 20 Sep 2014). The author points out how the performances merge classic drama with historical or socio-political narratives. However, she claims that such fusion fully succeeds only in Paweł Passini's piece.
Ewa Fita. Festival of performance
In her account of the 19th Konfrontacje Teatralne Festival in Lublin, Ewa Fita points out the features shared by the performances shown during the event: their performative character and active attempts to influence the emotions of the audience. In her opinion, the most interesting productions were Typographic Majuscule by dramAcum theatre, Testament by She She Pop company, Margarete by Jacek Turkowski, as well as Parallel by Groundfloor i Some use for your broken clay pots by Christophe Meierhans.
Julia Lizurek. Re-volutions?
Julia Lizurek reviews four performances shown during the 1st New Theatre Festival in Rzeszów (15- 21 Nov 2014): Paradise Now? RE//MIX Living Theatre by Komuna//Warszawa, Jeżycjada: Field of Research by Weronika Szczawińska, Future Heroes by Markus Öhrn and a production of the Wanda Siemaszkowa Theatre in Rzeszów – The Old Woman Broods, directed by Jakub Falkowski. Searching for new aesthetics in contemporary theatre, the author inquires about their revolutionary potential. She wants to prove that theatre which requires intellectual competence can also have an emotional impact on the spectator.
Piotr Olkusz. A fictional journey to the other side of life
Piotr Olkusz emphasises the fact that the performance Interiors by the British theatre Vanishing Point (presented at the New Classics of Europe Festival in Łódź (24 Oct – 21 Nov 2014) refers to Maurice Maeterlinck's play mainly in terms of the main idea and the concpet of the plot. The director Matthew Lenton has retained two different spaces present in the play – the eponymous interior and the space occupied by the observer. The author of the article notices a deep analysis of the literary work in the performance, which thus becomes an excellent metaphor of symbolism itself.
Tomasz Kowalski. The house midway along the street
Tomasz Kowalski analyses Bis zum Tod (prem. 20 Sep 2014, Volksbühne in Berlin), the last part of the triptych by Markus Öhrn, the Swedish company Intitutet and the Finnish band Nya Rampen. The performance, dealing with family relationships, was shown in Poznań as part of the cycle # I am not indifferent towards you. Kowalski focuses on the main theme of the performance, i.e. The „vivisection of bourgeois family life” undertaken by the creators.
Julia Hoczyk. Thing, body, object
Julia Hoczyk reviews the performances shown at the Body/Mind Festival (Warsaw, 18-28 Sep 2014). She groups them according to three subjects: the relationship between the human being and the objects (UNTITLED_I will be there when you die – Alessandro Sciarroni, Nothing’s for something – Heine Avdal, Yukiko Shinozaki, Mouvinsitu – Les Choses de Rien); exposing and transgressing masculinity (Felix Mathias Ott's The Iliad, Olivier Dubois's Solus); the right to express one's individuality on the stage (ATLAS Warszawa – Ana Borralho and João Galante). Hoczyk also points out that the aim of ATLAS and Souls is social criticism, while the rest of the productions have been inspired by various artistic genres. The author considers UNTITLED_I will be there when you die the best performance shown at the festival.
Tadeusz Kornaś. Devilish-angelic advocacy
The world of performance studies has waited for a long time for the book Grotowski&Company: Źródła i wariacje (Grotowski&Company: Sources and Variations), published by the Grotowski Institute in 2014. Tadeusz Kornaś focuses mainly on its documentary value. It describes everyday life in Jerzy Grotowski's company, but also allows the reader to learn more about Ludwik Flaszen himself – one of the most important Polish theatre critics, a longtime collaborator of the director. The book answers a frequently asked questions about Flaszen's role in the Laboratory Theatre and the influence of his Jewish descent on the themes present in performances such as Hamlet Study.
Dobrochna Ratajczakowa. The performer (not really) creates theatre
Mirosław Kocur's book Źródła teatru (The Sources of Theatre), published in 2013 by Wrocław University Press is devoted to rituals and performances of early and ancient peoples before the appearance of theatre. Dobrochna Ratajczakowa's review criticises the vagueness of the notion of performing used by Kocur. On the other hand, Kocur also presents an interesting attempt to link the evolution and development of ritual with such homo sapiens performances as burying the dead or ornamenting the body.
Jarosław Wójtowicz. Dream, story, experience...
Jarosław Wójtowicz's text is devoted to the publication of the second volume of scenarios by Jerzy Grzegorzwski (Improwizacje. Scenariusze autorskie 1994-2005 – Improvisations. Scenarios 1994-2005, Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute, Warsaw 2014). The author describes the structure of the publication, situating its publication in the context of earlier books devoted to the director. He also tells about several difficulties with editing texts written by this particular artist. At the same time he hopes that the Scenarios will help to protect the memory about Grzegorzewski from erosion or excessive mythologisation |