Maryla Zielińska:Which Way, Which Way, Which Way …
A text devoted to a play by Krzysztof Warlikowski – African Tales Based on Shakespeare (Nowy Theatre in Warsaw, co-produced by Prospero Group, premiere: 5.10.2011 – Liege, Polish premiere: 2.12.2011 – Warsaw). Describing the various parts of the play in detail, Zielińska explores the intricate construction of the script, the work of the actors, who she sees as committing a kind of physical self-sacrifice, the space, which creates a sense of intimacy in spite of its monumentality, and the theme of exclusion. In sum, she states that the greatest asset of the play is the “intimate contact it creates with the viewer, despite its monstrosity.”
Excluded: Each One of Us. Katarzyna Fazan speaks with Krzysztof Warlikowski
Krzysztof Warlikowski speaks about African Tales Based on Shakespeare. The director reveals details of his work on the script, which is a compilation of Shakespeare’s dramas and a novel by Coetzee. He also explains the structural function played by the monologues of Desdemona and Portia (written by Wajdi Mouawad) and the animated film Death and the Maiden. Next the talk turns to the play’s central themes, i.e. exclusion that less concerns individuals than every one of us; the father-daughter relationship, in which incest plays a role, and the accusation of molestation; the clash between old age and wisdom; and death. The director also speaks of building a relationship with the audience in his plays.
Which Way? Piotr Gruszczyński Speaks with Małgorzata Hajewska-Krzysztofik
A conversation about work on the roles of Portia and Emilia in Krzysztof Warlikowski’s latest play. Hajewska-Krzysztofik particularly focuses on the figure from The Merchant of Venice, analyzing her situation, her relationships with men, and the decisions she makes. She devotes a great deal of space to the scene in which Portia eats a pound of raw meat, which is a transgression of sorts for her, and becomes a slightly different experience every time. She also speaks of working with Warlikowski on the text and about how the intellectual approach to the role was translated into physicality.
Philip Auslander: Live or…?
Philip Auslander analyzes the encroachment of intermediate technology in live performances using examples from live events (sports), and “high culture” (theatre and symphonic music). The author traces the impact of the media on the tastes and responses of viewers and how economic concerns are decisive in subordinating plays and other live events to their media intermediaries – e.g. television broadcasts, later sold on DVD. An important theme of the text is the process wherein “the intermediated performance has become an important point of reference for the live performance.” With reference to Benjamin, Auslander analyzes how the mode of perception which appeared alongside mass culture has affected the above phenomena. Summing up, he examines mixed-media performances and the competition that occurs in them, the fusion or connection of direct and intermediary representation.
Lydia Haustein: Video Art
A text devoted to the relationship between art and new technologies and media. The author lists the most important stages of development in their mutual influence, presenting the leading artists (both their work in art, and their theoretical ideas). She also indicates how new technologies have changed the way we perceive identity, the body, the soul, and reality. The text concludes by stating that virtual experiences possible through using new technologies in art remind us that all of a person’s life is a hyper-realistic simulation.
Mateusz Borowski, Małgorzata Sugiera: Scheming with Mediality
The authors recall Jerzy Grotowski’s thesis from Toward a Poor Theater, on the necessity of stressing the attributes that distinguish theater from television and cinema. They compare his concept to the writings of Auslander, for whom “the idea of theater as an event in the ‘here and now,’ taking place ‘live’ in the presence of viewers, is more historical than ontological.” They then demonstrate how, over the past decades, theater has ceased to expose the effect of reality generated by television, in favor of rebuilding a “broken alliance” with the audience. The authors then show how the development of digital technologies, in changing the relationships between fiction and reality, “effectively undermined the existence of a theater that was critical toward media.” After making these observations, Sugiera and Borowski show that experiments in bio art have proven “what art can do when it directly interferes with reality.”
Post-media Theater: Mateusz Borowski and Małgorzata Sugiera Speak with Mirek Kaczmarek, Bartek Macias, Wojciech Puś, and Wojtek Ziemilski
A transcription of the Post-media Theater discussion organized by the Bunkier Sztuki Club and Didaskalia magazine (5.12.2011). The conversation with the artists accompanied by video projections for theater performances raised a range of issues tied to the presence of new theater technologies. The artists debated whether the use of media more often served to create illusions or to make experiments, and spoke of technologies and ways of using them, trying to isolate the impact a camera has on an actor’s work. When it came to conversations on their own work in the theater and the division of competencies among the artists creating a play, the most important thread of the conversation was theater as an institution, and the distance that separates theory from everyday stage practice.
Patrycja Cembrzyńska: Death-a-Porte
An article devoted to the links between fashion and death. The author describes various aspects of the spectacular funerals of various fashion designers (such as Gianni Versace and Yves Saint-Laurent) and how they function in the media (in the acclaim written on the Internet). She also shows how fashion is inspired by death, describing a photo session at a cemetery dedicated to Saint-Laurent made by Steven Meisel. She points out the strong ties between fashion and vampirism and the macabre styles of photography and fashion shows (such as Alexander McQueen and John Galliano), all the while keeping track of cultural and market mechanisms that abet the Thanatic entanglements of fashion.
Dorota Jarząbek: Proteus’s Funeral
A text devoted to actors’ funerals in the latter half of the 19th century. Citing numerous reports and descriptions of theater stars’ funerals, the author treats them as an example of the theater mania of the time, proof of the social status of actors, and as material that allows us to delve into the dominant manner of perceiving the privacy and intimacy of the stage artist. Jarząbek describes the funerals of such stars as Jan Królikowski, Helena Modrzejewska, and Alojzy Żółkowski. She points out the procedures accompanying the wait for a ceremony – stressing the physical presence of the actor’s body. She then describes the course of the funeral, during which the disappearance of the literal presence of the body took place.
Jan Burnatowski: Pankowski and Giedroyć – Extracts from Correspondence
Jan Burnatowski covers a several-year correspondence between Marian Pankowski and Jerzy Giedroyć – the publisher of the émigré Kultura magazine. Providing numerous quotes, the author pulls out what she believes to be the most important and interesting strains of the correspondence. He therefore has a look at Pankowski’s work in journalism, which included serving as an envoy for Kultura at the International PEN Club Meet in Amsterdam in 1954. Burnatowski also mentions Pankowski’s opinions on the work of Polish authors expressed in his letters, with particular emphasis on Witold Gombrowicz, whom he admired. Finally, he shares the quarrel concerning Pankowski’s literary work, causing a rift in his collaboration with Giedroyć, who did not want to publish his prose.
Jakub Momro: The Ban on Representation and Banned Representation (Pankowski, Libera, Nancy)
Jakub Momro analyzes how the subject of the Holocaust is broached in Marian Pankowski’s Making Theater over the Holy Borscht and Lego: A Concentration Camp by Zbigniew Libera, in the context of Jean-Luc Nancy’s theory of the “ban on representation.” He notes that Pankowski and Libera “demonstrate the rules of modern iconoclasm in order to perceive the cognitive, ethical, and anthropological entanglements of the medium itself (theater, art, the ‘object’) in the structure of the ‘ban on representation.’ The work of both artists is saddled with a risk that involves remaining in the aesthetic dimension of representation, which can not be separated from other territories of human activity and sensitivity.” The stakes of their artistic efforts is the ethical/aesthetic difference.
Jadwiga Majewska: Slowly, with Growing Expression…
Jadwiga Majewska describes two dance plays by Raimund Hoghe – Swan Lake, 4 Acts dedicated to Anna Pavlova, and 36, Avenue Georges Mandel inspired by Maria Callas – shown in October 2011 at the Old Brewery in Poznań. With very precise analyses of various scenes, she tries to also indicate the characteristic attributes of Hoghe’s choreography. She notes that the artist expatiates at length about his own crippled body, “making it the basis of his distinctiveness,” composing the beginning of the play so that it is different every time, and operating the lights with equal subtlety. In conclusion, Majewska states: “All of Hoghe’s works uphold the same aesthetic, but each has its own, special mood which sets it apart.”
Man, Form, Ritual. Jadwiga Majewska speaks with Raimund Hoghe
An extraordinarily in-depth and multi-layered conversation with Raimund Hoghe. The artist speaks about his creative path: from writing, through being Pina Bausch’s dramaturg, to making his own plays and the decision to appear on stage. He speaks of the genesis of subjects addressed in his theater, concerning recent history, art history and artists, and the history of humanity. He explains the principles he follows to create plays about people and with people, whom he considers beautiful in a spiritual sense. He also discusses theater as a ritual that joins people. Finally, he speaks of nakedness in his plays, and of the Sacre performance.
Tadeusz Kornaś: Between Liturgy, Concert and Theater
The point of departure for Tadeusz Kornaś’s interdisciplinary text, which straddles the line between theatrology, theater history, theology, and the history of dogma and liturgy, art history, and archeology is a symposium in Brixen devoted to the liturgical drama of the East and the West. The text contains both a description and an analysis of The Mystery of Three Young Men in the Fiery Furnace performed by the Byzantion Choir of Iaşi, and an in-depth presentation of the Byzantine liturgical drama, which is little known in Poland.
Joanna Jopek: The Power of Disgust
A review of the play In the Name of Jakub S., based on a text by Paweł Demirski and directed by Monika Strzępka (Gustaw Holoubek Dramatyczny Theater in Warsaw – premiere: 17.12.2011; Łaźnia Nowa Theater in Krakow, premiere: 8.12.2011). The author claims that the Krakow show differed from its Warsaw counterpart in terms of its dynamics and the subjects stressed. The Krakow premiere was dark, and pertained to the vision of the national community rooted in tradition (including theatrical tradition). In Warsaw, on the other hand, it was dynamic and fun – the “accent shifted from national affairs to the issue of public space in society, class relations, and the organization of the capitalist system, revealing the inner cracks that lead to the creation of false narratives of identity.” In either, Jopek perceives an ethical project of sorts.
Monika Kwaśniewska: Crumbling the Monument
A report from the “Polish Monuments” review, which was held during the 4th International Divine Comedy Theater Festival (Krakow, 8-15.12.2011). Kwaśniewska places the review in the context of the festival, claiming that the subject of the nation was prevalent. Comparing the stagings of “canonical” texts, such as Pan Tadeusz (dir.: Mikołaj Grabowski), with performances based on new dramas, such as Aleksandra: A Piece on Piłsudski by Sylwia Chutnik (dir. Marcin Liber) and If Not Now Then When, If Not Us Then Who by Magdalena Głuchowska and Justyna Lipko-Konieczna (dir. M. Głuchowska), she opines that the newer texts were much more pointed in addressing “the real issues in contemporary Poland and its citizens than the reinterpretations of the Romantic works.”
Maryla Zielińska: Suturing
The author describes and analyzes the first year of Andrzej Seweryn’s direction of the Polski Theater in Warsaw. Zielińska first mentions the theater’s financial problems, which appeared at the outset of the director’s stint, acknowledging that they have been an important context for his work. She then presents Seweryn’s intellectual, artistic, and political standpoint, seeing these as the basis for the decisions he makes. In presenting the repertoire she divides it into two basic streams: the reconstruction of old theatrical aesthetics, and the plays dealing with Polish issues. While this key to the repertoire seems clear to the author, the choice of directors raises some doubts, as to a large degree they decided upon the fairly low artistic merit of the plays.
Joanna Targoń: A Rejected Transplant
A review of the play Nosferatu directed by Grzegorz Jarzyna (National Theater in Warsaw, TR Warsaw, premiere: 12.11.2011). Though Targoń appreciates the beauty of the stage solutions, she unambiguously criticizes the play. She believes that Jarzyna has not managed to make Stoker’s novel and Murnau’s film (the bases of the script) contemporary. The basic problem is that, while the vampire figure is usually an expression of concealed desires and fears, Jarzyna has failed to clarify the significance it has in his play, which makes it difficult to isolate the main theme of the performance.
Paweł Schreiber: Half-formed Man
A review of the play Ophelias, based on a text by Jolanta Janiczak, and directed by Wiktor Rubin (Wilam Horzycy Theater in Toruń, premiere: 13.11.2011), whose protagonists are three female artists, Camille Claudel, Zelda Fitzgerald, and Sylvia Plath, their partners, and a woman oppressing Plath – Assia Wevill. Schreiber points out the complexity and ambiguity of Janiczak’s text, in which “the images and words contradict those that have come before.” He then states that “Rubin’s very fascinating (and very individual!) theatrical language […] is a good match for Janiczak’s text.” Nonetheless, the play is not without its flaws – it can be too static, abstract, and tiring.
Katarzyna Lemańska: Ars Amandi
Love, erotica, desire, delight – all this can be found in this contemporary guide to the philosophy of pleasure, the Kamasutra. In their latest play entitled Kamasutra: A Study of Pleasure (Dramatyczny Theater in Wałbrzych, premiere: 31.12.2011), Weronika Szczawińska and Bartosz Fr¹ckowiak have set about to “rewrite” V?tsy?yana’s work. The author defines the performance as an “instrument of desire” and a “pleasure machine,” a kind of theatrical ars amandi. At the same time, she emphasizes the philosophical and ethical character of the “pleasure principle” which governs the play.
Piotr Olkusz: Halfway to the Government Inspector
A review of Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector, directed by Marek Fiedor (S. Jaracz Theater in Łódź, premiere: 12.11.2011). The author notes that the director has tried to bring Gogol’s drama up to date. To this end, he made the main theme the relationship between the Polish countryside and its inhabitants. Olkusz notes, however, that the topic is dated: “This is less a play about Poland from the 7th term of the Sejm than of the first post-communist term.” The author puts forward the thesis that if the director had made a play about a provincial government in our day, it would turn out that “Gogol’s text – happily – would cease to be relevant.” The play therefore leaves the audience wanting.
Magdalena Talar: Debut of the Viewer’s Visibility
Magdalena Talar describes the Young Directors’ Forum, organized by Krakow’s PWST Theater Academy from 17-20 November 2011. The review aimed to promote young artists: graduates, and sometimes even theater school students. Analyzing plays in terms of their relationship to the viewer, the author points out young artists’ departure from the dramatic text, and the so-to-speak emancipation of the theater viewer, who in some performances achieved the rank of a true co-creator.
Marta Michalak Speaks with Dominika Knapik
An interview with Dominika Knapik, a self-proclaimed “thinking actress/dancer/choreographer.” Knapik states how and why she came into dance after finishing theater school. She shows the reader the genesis of her “alphabet of movements,” based on two autobiographical plays: How Do You Like It and Not I. She also describes her collaborations with other artists – mainly Wojtek Klimczyk and Iga Gańczarczyk – and speaks of the various roles she has played: actress, dancer, choreographer in dance and theater performances. Nor does she pass over the question of the problematic position of the choreographer in Polish dramatic theaters. To conclude, she speaks of her new projects and her plans for the future.
Jan Niedziela: Threats of the Post-dramatic Faust
A review of the play Faust I + II, based on Goethe’s drama, directed by Nicolas Stemann (Salzburg Festival, premiere: 28.072011; Thaliatheater in Hamburg, premiere: 30.10.2011). Niedziela precisely describes the construction and interpretive premises of both parts. In his description of Part One he focuses on the analysis of three roles: Sebastian Rudolph (the poet, who presents the “Dedication,” “Prologue in Theater,” and “Prologue in Heaven” alone for the first hour), Philipp Hochmair (Faust), and Patrycja Ziółkowska (Gretchen). He also notes that, alongside the classical interpretations of this part, we can also find the theme of the “Faustian man” in this part of the play “with all his ups and downs.” Writing about Part Two, he foregrounds its critique of capitalism.
We’re All Faust. Jan Niedziela Speaks with Patrycja Ziółkowska
A conversation with the creator of the female roles in Faust I + II, directed by Nicolas Stemann. Ziółkowska speaks of her work on the role, whose point of departure was no concrete figure, but the “cognitive cosmos” of the text, the Faustian man and energy. She then compares this work to a previous rendition of Goethe’s drama, directed by Laurent Chetouane, in which she appeared. Outlining her path in the theater, she mentions her collaboration with various directors – primarily Luk Perceval – and explains why she worked freelance for some time.
Agnieszka Marek: Cambodian Forefathers
An insightful and multifaceted analysis of the play L’Histoire terrible mais inachevée de Norodom Sihanouk, roi de Cambodge, based on a text by Helene Cixous and directed by Georges Bigot and Delphine Cottu (Festival Sens Interdits – Célestins, Théâtre de Lyon, premiere: November 2011). The performance is a reconstruction of an Ariane Mnouchkine play of 1985. Because the reconstructed first part of the script concerns the history of Cambodia under the rule Norodom Sihanouk, a key tactic of the creators of the remake was to cast Cambodian actors in the play. This facilitated “‘transcribing’ the 1985 play into a different cultural code and telling the history of the ravaged country from a new perspective,” and as such, revealing the “expansiveness of Western culture, which has produced its own myth of Cambodia.”
Katarzyna Osińska: The Question of Soviet Art Today. Madrid – Rome – Moscow
This text on various exhibitions of Russian art served the author as a pretext to ponder its reception. The exhibitions collected at the Red Cavalry. Creativity and Power in Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1945 in Madrid “represent almost all the spheres of art: […] they provide a fascinatingly complex picture of the epoch.” The Socialist Realism. Great Soviet Painting 1920-1970 exhibition in Rome devoted to realist art proved a “great interest in the avant-garde of the latter half of the 20th century, while obscuring the fact that it existed alongside an art that was an extension of 19th-century academism.” Osińska also describes two exhibitions in Moscow. The first, presenting the work of 19th-century realist painter Nikolai Ge, showed the popularity of this tradition among audiences. The second, then, an exhibition of works by William Kentridge, an African artist inspired by the Russian avant-garde, proved the artistic power of the avant-garde movement.
Thomas Irmer: Diabolical Ibsen – The Main Attraction at the Opening of the Berlin Season is John Gabriel Borkman
A review of the play John Gabriel Borkman by Ida Müller and Vegard Vinge. This performance, shown at the opening after the renovation of the Prater – the second stage at the Volksbühne – follows a two-week marathon of The Wild Duck, in the form of a shop-window diorama, staging Henrik Ibsen’s drama made by the duet. Irmer describes the play, and ultimately compares it with the Ibsen trilogy directed by Thomas Ostermeier, who set the action in the context of the contemporary middle-class bourgeoisie. Müller and Vinge’s play is, the author believes, more complex, because it attempts to grasp the bases of our Protestant-capitalist culture.
Bálint Kovács, Fanni Nánay: Power, Fun. The Image of Current Politics in Contemporary Hungarian Theater
The authors state that few plays are being produced in Hungary to address the country’s increasingly disturbing socio-political situation. Nonetheless, “Few plays of this sort are […] among the season’s major events.” These include three works described and analyzed by the authors: Coriolanus by the HOPPart Group, King John by the Örkény Theater, and The Misanthrope by the József Katona Theater. In analyzing the political statements of the plays, the authors conclude that it is not dangerous to tackle political issues in Hungary. They place their hopes, however, in these plays influencing spectators, although they remain outside the spectrum of politicians’ interest.
Natalia Jakubowa: The Phenomenon of Chernyakov
The author describes the operas directed by Dmitry Chernyakov, beginning with his first, Young David (1998), and continuing through Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress (2003), Eugene Onegin (2006), Khovanshchina (2007) and Wozzeck (2009), Don Giovanni (2010), Dialogues des Carmélites (2010), up until his performance of 2011: Simon Boccanegra byVerdi. The author indicates the changes occurring in the director’s style (from exaggerated effects to stern discipline) and describes the characteristic attributes of his theater. She thus outlines the framing of the space and the idea of variation in a single space, and also the grasp of music, action, and character that come in conflict with popular interpretations.
Ruslan and Ludmila by Dmitry Chernyakov
A review of the latest opera directed by Dmitry Chernyakov – Mikhail Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmila in the famed, recently-renovated Bolshoi Theater in Moscow (premiere: 2.11.2011). The author gives a summary of Chernyakov’s work to date at the Moscow theater, five stagings in total. She also describes the atmosphere of scandal and bitterness that dominated the reception of this latest production. The author then outlines the director’s main interpretive strategies: “Chernyakov’s version of Glinka’s opera is less a fairy-tale than an attempt to live through the emotions of the protagonists. The director tells the classic story in his own words, giving it parallel, even conflicting meanings.”
Yes I Burned Down My Own House: Leszek Kolankiewicz Speaks with Eugenio Barba
A transcription of a meeting (Theater Institute, 17.11.2011) devoted to Barba’s most recent book: Burning Down the House. The Origins of a Director (Jerzy Grotowski Institute and Warsaw University Publishers, 2011). Barba explains how he understands the phrase “burning down the house” – in both a metaphorical and an autobiographical sense. He speaks of the breakthrough stages of his life and work in the context of political and cultural changes. He also responds to questions concerning the effect of art on society, drawing from his experiences in the Odin Teatret he runs in the town of Holstebro, where he has lived for several decades.
Dariusz Kosiński: The Battle for Roots
A review of a book by Eli Rozik, The Roots of Theater (Naukowe PWN Publishers, Warsaw 2011). Kosiński says that the subject of Rozik’s work is anachronous, because the battle with the theory of the ritual roots of theater ended long ago, and the thesis Rozik is collapsing was defeated many years in the past (All the more so, given that Rozik makes no reference to recent works, such as Schechner’s Performance). Moreover, in Rozik’s theory itself – though it is inspiring in many ways – the reader “constantly stumbles […] on claims that raise doubts, or issues with which the author clearly cannot contend.”
Justyna Gajek: And Here Be the Tears of the Oppressed, And None to Comfort Them
A review of a book by Edith Hall: Greek Tragedy: Suffering Under the Sun (Oxford 2010). Gajek presents the issues raised in the book, focusing on the central motivations of Hall’s work, such as: the relationship between the world of the living and the dead, the suffering of heroes, which is tied to the sun motif the author analyzes, and the social and religious significance of the Greek theater. In Gajek’s view, the book is a “compendium of knowledge on ancient theater and drama,” and might serve as a fine textbook. |