Vive la Pologne!

Review of The Polish Club, a play directed by Paweł Miśkiewicz (Teatr Dramatyczny in Warsaw, premiere: 10 November 2010). Wichowska remarks that a director who has so far avoided political categories has created a play which, by examining the myth of Polish Romanticism and the Great Emigration, is reacting almost openly to the public mood of last year connected with the Smolensk catastrophe. The Polish Club therefore enters, in her opinion, the tradition of Romantic revisionism as a foundation of Polish identity and a template for Poles’ collective imagination.

Theatre Post-April 10 – Leszek Kolankiewicz and Dorota Sajewska talk with Marta Michalak

Discussion about The Polish Club, directed by Paweł Miśkiewicz. Its participants analyse the play’s beginning, when the audience is asked to rise for the national anthem, which, according to Sajewska (the play’s scriptwriter), is an emblem of the sadomasochistic stance prevailing in theatre, while for Kolankiewicz, it represents Artaud’s “Theatre of Cruelty”. By analysing other elements of the production, they show how the play, by raising the issues of patriotism, symbolic language and the participation of the Church in community life, corresponds both with such events as the death of John Paul II or the Smolensk catastrophe, and with the artistic tradition – in particular the output of Wyspiański and Grzegorzewski.

Trialling a Work

A text devoted to Bożena Umińska-Keff’s On Mother and the Fatherland and its two theatrical realisations: Marcin Liber’s at the Contemporary Theatre in Szczecin (premiere: 26 March 2010) and that by Jan Klata at The Polish Theatre in Wrocław (premiere: 6 January 2011). On analysing the text and recalling its genesis, the author remarks that the text’s central theme is hate: a daughter’s for her mother and that of Poles for Jews. The recognition granted Umińska-Keff’s work has not translated into approval for its stage versions. Describing the two productions, Guderian-Czaplińska states that Marcin Liber overdid it with his empathy for the text, while Jan Klata completely rejected the opportunity to personally engage with the story.

Art Have Nothing To Do With Justice – Marta Bryś talks to Bożena Umińska-Keff

This conversation with the author of On Mother and the Fatherland contains a description of the text’s genesis – a very personal impulse which after some time required distancing, artistic “processing” and universal applicability. They then raise the following issues: the toppling of the mother myth, relations between mother and daughter, identity in large measure constructed by historical narrative, Polish nationalism and anti-Semitism. Keff also comments on both productions realised on the basis of her text, favouring Marcin Liber’s staging over Jan Klata’s version.

After the Premiere

The author acknowledges that the kind of changes which Jan Klata made in Bożena Umińska-Keff’s text, toning down the holocaust and Polesie anti-Semitism themes, could arouse disquiet. However she remarks that, if the production is viewed as an autonomous theatrical work, it is difficult to deny him the power to act. She then provides her own interpretation of the performance, concentrating on the Mother – Daughter and Woman – Culture relationships.

Elizabeth LeCompte Directs Frank Dell’s The Temptation of Saint Antony. The Invisible Director: Creating in Company

In 1986 Susan Letzler Cole observed the process of creating the Wooster Group’s Frank Dell’s The Temptation of St. Antony from the first read through. In the reprinted text that forms part of the Directors in Rehearsal book, she describes the work’s respective stages, mainly concentrating on the role played by the director Elizabeth LeCompte and co-director Peter Sellars, but also the entire Wooster Group and other collaborators in the creation of a script compiled from several different texts and the performance. The author stresses how hugely significant the route taken by the rehearsals was for the play’s final shape: “The Wooster Group is staging the problematic of reading texts and making theatre”

The Wooster Group: A Dictionary of Ideas

The author describes characteristic features of the Wooster Group’s output in twenty six entries. The form of the resulting dictionary is very original and heterogeneous. Alongside entries describing such matters as the form of plays combining intertextual, intercultural and intermedia elements, less commonplace entries can be found in the new definition of liber mundi, a new dramaturgical concept employed by the group that relied on the combining of different technologies into a theatrical form, like the utterances of actors, dialogue between Elizabeth LeCompte and Richard Foreman, and also questions left without answers and the author of the text’s doubts regarding the group’s output and activity.

Obverse of a Performance

A text devoted to the oldest play in the Wooster Group’s current repertoire North Atlantic. Based on a text by James Strahs, its premiere took place in 1983 and it was revived with new casts in 1990 and 2010. Grabuś notes that this play differs greatly from the Group’s other performances: there’s no video projections, the actors create fictional characters who act in accordance with their fictional impulses and the plot is linear in form. The fundamental issue raised by North Atlantic, named a “touchstone” in the Group’s output by Elizabeth LeCompte, is the questioning of the possibility of the continuation and inheritance of identity in artistic practice.

Return to Images: Aneta Mancewicz talks with Elizabeth LeCompte

This interview with the director of the Wooster Group covers both the Hamlet presented during the Shakespeare Festival in Gdańsk in 2009 and the group’s latest performance – Vieux Carré. Elizabeth LeCompte talks about changes in her work techniques and the thematic material of the plays finished during the creation of the newest performance and also about her work with the group and the problem of telling a story and the relationships between the media she has employed and death, the past and memory in the theatre she creates.

Cultural Performances

Taking up the theme of cultural performances, Fischer-Lichte describes theatre forms which set themselves the aim of effecting long-lasting changes in the lives of viewers and participants – from Greek tragedy to 16th century Jesuit theatre and forms that appeared in the 20th and 21st centuries. The author draws attention to performance forms that have so far been disregarded by (German) theatrology, such as therapeutic theatre, or “role-playing games”, community theatre, prison theatre and theatre in areas of military activity. She also highlights the fluid boundary separating theatre from the worlds of sport competitions or political gatherings. Fischer-Lichte postulates an interdisciplinary line of research that would fill out the already existing assumptions regarding these performance forms.

Performativity and Performance Art Theory

The aim of James Loxley’s text is to highlight the similarities and differences between research interests and issues in performance art theory and Austin’s performativity. Loxley investigates the evolution of theatre from performance to an art which has become more an activity than an artifact: from Brecht’s epic theatre to Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, the happening and performance art. Afterwards, by invoking the theories of Erving Goffman, Victor Turner, Richard Schechner, Jon McKenzie, Dwight Conquergood and Judith Butler and describing and analysing a performance by Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit…, the author problematises the issue of the boundary between daily reality and a theatre performance.

Ordering or Problematising?
Mateusz Borowski and Małgorzata Sugiera describe several textbooks from the field of performance theory (Marvin Carlson’s Performance, Richard Schnecher’s Performance Theory, Erika Fischer-Licht’s Theaterwissenschaft. Eine Einführung in die Grundlagen des Faches and James Loxley’s Performativity), attempting – on the basis of the knowledge that constitutes performance theory – to analyse new strategies for disseminating and reproducing this knowledge in textbooks, readers and anthologies tailored to the changes occurring in higher education. They thus attempt to answer the question posed in the title: is the task of textbooks under the new conditions prevailing in the humanities more “to order or to problematise?”

Mieczysław Piotrowski – Description of an Artist

A text devoted to Mieczysław Piotrowski. Szwarc relates and describes successive stages in the development of an artist’s artist, devoting most space to his prose output. By analysing his novels in turn – The Gardeners (Ogrodnicy), Gold Wormm (Złoty robak), Backs to the Wall (Plecami przy ścianie), Four Seconds (Cztery sekundy), An Artist’s Travels Through Lorraine (Podróż Artysty przez Lotaryngię) – Szwarc shows the manner in which Piotrowski “played” with literary conventions, reaching his own unique solutions.

A Certain Piotrowski. Theatrically Possible Worlds

A text devoted to the almost forgotten figure of novelist, illustrator and playwright – Mieczysław Piotrowski. Jopek completes introductory research into publications treating this artist’s output and then, following in the trail of Adam Wiedemann – looks into his drama output. The author describes Piotrowski’s theatre worlds, paying attention to their experimental aspects and interactivity. The author regards the central theme in Piotrowski’s output to be man – lost among the unsteady, rickety scaffolding of strange plots.

Two Words, Four Seconds: Joanna Jopek talks with Ewa Bułhak

An interview devoted to Mieczysław Piotrowski, the person and his output. Bułhak, who knew Piotrowski personally and also directed one of his plays – Melancholy (Melancholia) – contrasts this novelist and playwright’s oeuvre with the avant-garde ideal and Lacanist psychoanalysis. She also talks about the circle to which Piotrowski was linked and his friendship with Grzegorzewski. Bułhak also describes The March (Marsz), directed by Grzegorzewski, and a self-directed play.

“James Bond Won’t Return”

Review of the production James Bond: - Pigs Don’t See Stars, based on a text by Jolanta Janiczak, directed by Wiktor Rubin and staged at the Drama Theatre in Wałbrzych (premiere: 18 November 2010). Kwaśniewska notes that Janiczak and Rubin puff up and break down the Bond formula to straining point and plant explosives in the resultant gaps, opening out spaces difficult to label, grasp, enclose or evaluate. The ambivalence arising from this method is, according to Kwaśniewska, the most interesting feature of the play.

A Matter to Take Care Of – Monika Kwaśniewska talks with Agnieszka Kwietniewska

Agnieszka Kwietniewska talks about her artistic path, beginning with her work at the S. Żeromski Theatre in Kielce. More space is devoted, however, to her experiences at the Teatr Dramatyczny in Wałbrzych. Kwietniewska talks about the specifics of working in this place, her methods of creating roles in the productions emerging from the “We Know, We Know” seasons, her cooperation with Monika Strzepka and Paweł Demirski on productions (including Long Live War!!! and There Was Andrzej, Andrzej, Andrzej and Andrzej) and also her work on the performance James Bond: - Pigs Don’t See Stars with Jolanta Janiczak and Wiktor Rubin.

Fragments of Body Discourse

A review of the production White Wedding, based on a play by Tadeusz Różewicz, directed by Weronika Szczawińska and realised at the Stefan Żeromski Theatre in Kielce (premiere: 4 December 2010). The author considers that Szczawińska has splendidly grasped the moment for Różewicz’s play to take on renewed relevance. Just as the playwright showed that the themes of the body, sex and sexuality were not properly taken up and discussed, Szczawińska shows that the current, multi-faceted conceptualisation of body has a similar effect – it oversimplifies a web of complicated ideas or issues to several stock clichés, which are bandied about in various configurations.

Technique

Review of Barbara Wysocka and Michał Zadara’s Anti-Oedipus (premiere: 18 November 2010). Żelisławski describes the clash of Wysocka and Zadara’s theatre aesthetics with the real presence of the body of a pregnant actress undergoing an ultrasound scan, writing that “rather than directing the production, they were trying to create a certain space for their own experience and that of the viewers.” Analysing the use of textual montage, he mentions possible links between the concept of schizoanalysis presented in Deleuze and Guattari’s book Anti-Oedipus and the figures of a schizophrenic with the situation of the unborn child, the main protagonist of this staged event, and with the situation of the viewer.

Banana on a Billboard or Everything for Sale

Review of Igor Stravinsky’s opera The Rake’s Progress, directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski at the Staatsoper Berlin (premiere: 10 December 2010). The author begins the text with a reminder of Stravinsky’s source of inspiration, the eight copperplate engravings created by William Hogarth in 1735. Krzywicka-Kaindel shows how Warlikowski has contemporised the reality of the text, applying an aesthetic inspired by both the road movie and Big Brother. In the author’s opinion, Warlikowski, by applying a trashy morality play key to the interpretation of Stravinsky’s opera, has created a delightful spectacle, glistening “like the coloured slides in an amused child’s kaleidoscope”.

Trojans

Review of Hector Berlioz’s opera Trojans, directed by Carlus Padrissa, whose premiere took place at the National Opera in Warsaw on 11 January 2010. Zielińska draws attention to two contexts in the production: the association of the Trojans with a computer a virus, and George Lucas’ StarWars. Zielińska describes the production in detail, noting that Padrissa plays with the motifs from computer games and films more than building a coherent narrative from them. Underlining the role of stage mechanics in the production, the author states the “the director certainly not only has ideas but also creative invention”, but a lack of care and consistency caused the “indestructible convention of 19th century opera to intrude into the performance”.

Ghost House

Review of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Sebastian Nübling at the Münchner Kammerspiele (premiere: 16 January 2010). Felbeck describes the staging, paying particular attention to the actors’ creations: Wiebke Puls in the role of Blanche and Jochen Noch in the role of Mitch. On reviewing this production, the author claims, on the strength of Frank Bambauer’s direction of the Münchner Kammerspiele, that it is a marvellous actors’ group when under the leadership of exceptional directors.

A Pike, or a Crucian Carp
Review of Ivona, Princess of Burgundia, directed by David Farland and realised at the Cabaret Theatre in Sydney. The author draws attention to the difficulty of staging Gombrowicz’s drama in a country with completely different cultural traditions (there was never a landed gentry in Australia). The text has therefore been adapted to the realities of Australian society and history, at the same time being sharpened and brutalised. Piber appreciates the effect of these measures: “The performance has a good tempo, and doesn’t drag. The textual excisions were made tactfully and I didn’t sustain the impression the Australian adaptation was cribbed from Gombrowicz”.

From Harmony to Chaos

Review of the production IAS ON ME DE A by the Czech group Petra Tejnorová & the Company. Stojewska presents in her introduction the quite paradoxical situation of Czech theatre sunk into a kind of lethargy for a dozen or so years as a result of the exclusion of innovative internationally known directors and groups from “official” theatre circulation. The director of the reviewed production – Tejnorová – belongs to this very group of artists. Stojewska describes and analyses her last production, whose script was based on different variants of the Jason and Medea myth.

PeKiN in the Centre

Report from the 2nd “Warszawa Centralna” International Theatre Festival, subtitled Migrations (15-31 October 2010). Zielińska draws attention to the fact that the “migrations” in the title were conceived as a crossing of boundaries between states and nations, cultures, religions, various art disciplines and the sexes. She substantiates her proposition by describing the festival’s diverse programme – from events concentrated around the Palace of Culture (including Michael Marmarinos’ Plac Apokalipsa and Aernout Mik’s Communitas), to projects devoted to Fryderyk Chopin (including Christian Garcia from Velma’s Glissando and Adrian Walter’s Pandora Box – Paderewski) and productions by John Simons, René Pollesch, Dorky Park and the Tmuna Theatre from Tel Aviv. Zielińska does not however rate the festival as a success: For in her opinion, the festival lacks a clear form and loses its vigour as a result.

 

A Great Festival in a Small Reality

Report from the New Classics of Europe Festival, which took place in Łódź (19-26 November 2010). Olkusz describes the productions of international theatre masters presented during the festival: Jürgen Gosch’s The Seagull, Krapp’s Last Tape directed by Robert Wilson, Krystian Lupa’s The End Game and Alvis Hermanis’ The Young Ladies of Wilko and Short Stories by Shukshin. The outstanding, varied and simply but deftly designed artistic programme for the event contrasted with the embarrassing and ineffective accompanying promotion conducted both by the organisers – the Stefan Jaracz Theatre in Łódź – and its media patrons: TVP3 and the “Wyborcza” newspaper.

Protoform

Report from the International Small-Form Theatre Festival (Kraków, 13-20 November 2010). The author notes that the festival’s title: “Form: materia prima” gave the organisers huge leeway in the establishment of a programme. Thanks to this, any viewer tracking successive performances never knew what to expect. Describing the productions in turn (including Compagnie Philippe Genty’s Voyageurs immobiles, Figurentheater Wilde&Vogel’s Krabat, Compagnie Mossoux-Bonté’s Nuit sur le monde or the circus skills of Mädir Eugster from Rigolo Nouveau Cirque), Jarząbek-Wasyl demonstrates the diversity of the festival’s propositions.

Undisclosed Legacy

Guczalska writes about the reception in Poland of the writing, concept and theatre of Constantin Stanislavski. The article begins with a description of the reaction in Polish theatre circles to the artist’s death in 1938, when reminiscences and comments about him appeared on the “Polish Scene”, written by such figures as: Juliusz Osterwa, Mieczysław Limanowski, Stefan Jaracz, Aleksander Zelwerowicz and Stanisława Wysocka. Afterwards, Guczalska points out the varied influence of Stanislavski’s legacy on the oeuvre of Jerzy Grotowski, Jerzy Jarocki and Krystian Lupa, drawing attention to the fact that this interrelationship is never simple and direct.

Imperfection as a Complex Circumstance

Review of a new translation of Constantin Stanislavski’s book An Actor’s Work on Himself completed by Jerzy Czech and published by PWST in Kraków. Marszałek outlines the problem regarding the reception of the “system” proffered by Stanislavski – mainly known to theorists and practitioners of theatre for his essays, abstracts and syntheses. Afterwards, she compares the Czech’s translation with an earlier one completed by Aleksander Męczyński. She regards the changes made by the translator in an attempt to treat Stanislavski’s work as a manual written for actors positively. However she distances himself from the bold and critical comments made by Czech in relation to the Stanislavski myth, showing how often criticism stems from a translator’s lack of knowledge.

Actor as Witness

Review of Freddie Rokem’s Performing History, published by Księgarnia Akademicka. The author describes the basic assumptions of Rokem’s coherent yet elastic theory. Although she expresses certain doubts, she regards this book to be innovative in its manner of problematising the question of performing history. This title appears to be particularly valuable, as in it Rokem both establishes theatre as almost the best tool for communing with the past and holds the actor standing in the centre of the theatrical process to be accountable for its ultimate effectiveness.