Maryla Zielińska. What' New with Our Class?
Maryla Zielińska describes the foreign reception of Tadeusz Słobodzianek, opening by reflecting on the dichotomy between the number of stagings in Poland (two) and abroad (a great number). She ponders what interests foreigners in themes of Polish history, and the theatrical potential in the work's restrictive form. The critic compares Poland's “canonical” staging by Ondrej Spišák with performances in Oslo, Vilnius, and Helsingborg. Zielińska notes differences in terms of the directors' approaches to history, Jews, and extremism, and also in the drama's reception, which is conditioned by the socio-political situation in a given country and the world.
Grzegorz Niziołek. Affect Anxiety
Grzegorz Niziołek's article concerns the Polish reception of Claude Lanzmann's film Shoah.
The central issue is the affective impact of Lanzmann's work, which is far weaker in Poland than it is in the West. Niziołek formulates the thesis that the Polish society's fear of learning historical truth is an anxiety toward the affective aspect of a traumatic event. He believes that a great affective openness to the Polish/Jewish past circa the Holocaust derives from two stances, which form part of the work's structure: the “cathartic stance” (rejecting an aggressive approach toward the Jewish victims of the Holocaust) and the “critical stance” (accepting Poles' shared responsibility for the Holocaust). The methodological basis for his reasoning is provided by research by Dominick LaCapra and Shoshana Felman. The author also makes reference to the canceled premiere of Oliver Frljić's The Undivine Comedy: Scraps and Paweł Demirski and Monika Strzępka's The Undivine Comedy: I'M GONNA TELL GOD EVERYTHING!
Dorota Sajewska. Necro-performance
“Necro-performance' is what Dorota Sajewska calls the cultural spectacle of Polishness based on revitalizing historical remnants. She begins her investigation of the presence of this practice in Polish culture by describing the movements of the wounded soldier's body in Stefan Żeromski's The Faithful River. Sajewska locates metaphors of the chopping and decaying of the body in Polish literature, and investigates how national liberation uprisings and the Great War are present in Poland's collective memory and cultural texts. She raises a subject that is sidestepped in the Polish cultural discourse – the figure of the hysterical soldier – and analyzes the political function of melodramatic forms in literature and film. She then compares the premiere of the film version of The Faithful River (1922) and the crisis that was underway in the institutional theaters of the day, including the National Theater.
Bernhard, or: Us and Them. Monika Muskała, Krystian Lupa, and Janusz Margański in Conversation
Bernhard, or: Us and Them is a record of a discussion on Thomas Bernhard that took place during the Conrad Festival in Krakow (23.10.2015). The participants addressed the writer's problematic relationship to his native Austria and his prohibition on the publication and staging of his works within the country. The discussion covered the scandalous and fateful Austrian premiere of Heldenplatz in 1988. This topic served as a point of departure for speaking of Krystian Lupa's plays based on Bernhard's texts, i.e. The Woodcutters in Wrocław and Heldenplatz in Vilnius, as well as the earlier The Lime Works. The interlocutors also discussed Bernhard's plays and novels in terms of their translation difficulties, their linguistic attributes, and the writer's characteristic inextricable relationship between his life experience and his art.
Konrad Wojnowski. Storing the Trauma – The 9/11 Museum in New York
New Yorkers had to wait over a decade for the creation of a place to commemorate the attack on the World Trade Center. Yet the opening of the 9/11 Museum and the 9/11 Memorial have not closed the social debate on the subject – on the contrary they have sparked many debates and controversies. Wojnowski tries to analyze the specifics of this institution, venturing the thesis that it exists to nurture the trauma of September 11th in the consciousness of Americans visiting the site. To his mind, the creators of the exhibition put more effort into emphasizing the scale of the tragedy and its relevance to the present day than into giving the visitor a sense of distance from a certain historical process. Wojnowski supports his thesis primarily with reference to Mark Seltzer's essay “Wound Culture,” which diagnoses the typically American postmodern fascination for traumatic events.
Patrycja Cembrzyńska. The Mousetrap: On States of Emergency
Patrycja Cembrzyńska analyzes the motif of dehumanization in propaganda rhetoric that shows the enemy to be a verminous creature who seeks to destroy. In this way, the choice between disease and health can be used as a justification for ethnic cleansing. She draws from Agamben's concept of biopower, which strips the individual of his political identity and facilitates his subordination under the pretext of caring for the common good. Cembrzyńska describes artwork that addresses similar issues, such as Marina Abramović's Balkan Baroque performance. She also perceives the application of this sort of metaphor in the fight against the growing wave of terrorism.
Pola Sobaś-Mikołajczyk. More Than Smell
Pola Sobaś-Mikołajczyk reviews Yana Ross's play Heart of a Dog (Municipal Theater in Uppsala, premiere: 17.11.2015), stressing the timeliness and gravity of the refugee issue, which problematizes the adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's novel. The author points out the motif of the laboratory as an anthropological machine that turns Sharik the dog into a person. She particularly focuses on the process by which Sharik adapts to the inflexible framework of social structures and habits, which might be seen as a sort of animal training.
Grzegorz Stępniak. My Anaconda Don’t, or: That's How It Is, Don't You Think? Race Performativity Made in the USA
Grzegorz Stępniak compares the essentionalist and constructivist models of understanding race, and the shift in stress from its performative meaning to the eye of the beholder. He analyzes examples from various spheres: artistic and social performances, political poetry, events plucked straight from American streets, and the cultural representations of white trash identity found in the popular Orange Is the New Black series and a film with Eminem. In addition, he examines the cultural meanings of “whiteness” and “blackness,” which are always dependent on a certain cultural context, and delves into digressions and personal anecdotes, querying both the academic text and our changing perspectives on race.
Rosemary Klich. The Outside from the Inside: Acoustic Passages and Sonic Bodies in Multimedia Performative Projects
Taking as examples a few foreign contemporary performances that use audio technologies and various kinds of headphone systems, the author delves into the concept of “audio theater.” She proves that using audio technologies (dictaphones, microphones, analogue recordings) in performances enhances the involvement of the participant's senses and his/her reception of the performance. The author also points out the theatrical relationship between what is visible and what is audible. Recording equipment is described as a memory machine, and audio technology is called a medium to mobilize the viewers' imaginations. She shows that active listening occupies a central place in the plays she mentions, which engage an auditorium, not a spectator.
Monika Kwaśniewska. The Divine Comedy: Between Hierarchy and Anarchy
Monika Kwaśniewska attempts to describe and analyze the 8th International Divine Comedy Festival in Krakow (3-13.12.2015) as a whole. As such, she does not focus on interpreting the various plays, but turns her eye toward the affective impact of the festival, investigates its structure, promotional tactics, and suggested participation strategies. One of the more important questions that emerges in this narrative concerns the potential effect of Divine Comedy on the existing hierarchies in Polish theater. Kwaśniewska wonders to what extent the festival reinforces the “canon” and to what extent it modifies and challenges it.
Retrieving Talent: Danuta Marosz in Conversation with Michał Centkowski
An interview with the head director of the Dramatyczny Theater in Wałbrzych. Michał Centkowski raises the issue of how the theater functions, both in a formal respect (the management of the institution) and an artistic one (strategies of collaborating with the various artistic directors: Piotr Kruszczyński, Sebastian Majewski, Piotr Ratajczak, and Maciej Podstawny). The conversation also covers the mission of the public theater, which leads to a number of points on the communication between a local audience and an institution.
Katarzyna Waligóra. Everyone Voted “No”
Katarzyna Waligóra reviews Zapolska Superstar, or: How to Lose in Order to Win (Dramatyczny Theater in Wałbrzych, premiere: 16.10.2015). The author stresses the ambiguous effect of the performance: the artists approach the figure of Gabriela Zapolska with seriousness and respect, but they also maintain some ironic distance toward her. Zapolska's uncompromising attitude is problematized, as is her remarkable self-assurance, which are depicted as mechanisms to negate outworn norms and conventions. Waligóra particularly focuses on the actors, who have a splendid grasp of the text's satirical potential, and who sometimes have critical interpretations of the views expressed within it.
Dawid Dudko. Calling Mankind
Dawid Dudko reviews The Possibility of an Island directed by Magda Szpecht (TR Warsaw, premiere: 18.11.2015), calling attention to the significance of the space arranged as a transitory area, combining past and future. Dudko suggests that the intermingling of the time frames prompts some basic questions on man's existence in the world. He also highlights the actors, who marvelously juggle various conventions. Moreover, he stresses the role played by sexuality, seen as an element that determines human presence, and the camera, which intensifies the sense of man's desire to alienate himself. Dudko appreciates Szpecht's performance for its unpredictability and intelligent ineffectiveness.
Piotr Dobrowolski. Hot!
A review of Michał Kmiecik's play Cracovians and Highlanders, based on A Self-Declared Miracle, or: Cracovians and Highlanders and Izkahara, King of Guaxara by Wojciech Bogusławski, at the Polski Theater in Poznań (premiere: 19.12.2015). Dobrowolski concentrates on the references to the present political situation in Poland – mainly concerning society's growing indignation toward the government. The author notes, for example, the similarities between the final scene of the street revolt and the events of 2010 involving the removal of the cross from in front of the presidential palace, and the palm tree on stage he sees as alluding to Joanna Rajkowska's work at de Gaulle Roundabout in Warsaw. Dobrowolski also points out the play's interesting use of music by Mateusz Górny – a precursor in joining electronic and ethnic music.
Tomasz Kowalski. “There's a little song I know – though it's not too clever, here's how it goes”
Tomasz Kowalski reviews Cezary Tomaszewski's play The Queen of Madagascar's Soldier (Bogusławski Theater in Kalisz, premiere: 12.12.2015), beginning by telling the story of how the work was created, and how it continues to function. The author sums up the plot in order to show how it disintegrates in the performance through fragmentation and the added subplots. Kowalski describes various scenes in order to show how the text exposes the theatricality of the actors' performances. He also lauds the acting and the director for their absurdist humor and the remarkable energy of the production.
Beata Guczalska. Ten Portraits with a Negative in the Background
Beata Guczalska reviews Platonov, directed by Konstantin Bogomolov at the Stary Theater in Krakow (premiere: 19.12.2015), pointing out that the casting of males for the female roles and females for the male roles was not meant to prompt reflection upon gender issues. To her mind, the play more aims to examine the nature of theater. She analyzes the actors' interpretations in particular, demonstrating their various strategies in distancing the performer from the character. At the same time, she notes that this distance does not overrule emotion, motivation analysis, and the characters' feelings. In conclusion, she sketches a portrait of the director and, making reference to his Ice at the National Theater in Warsaw, she states that Bogomolov is having difficulty defining his relationship to the Polish stage tradition and his own role within it.
Monika Wąsik. A Handout on Reymont
Monika Wąsik writes of The Promised Land directed by Remigiusz Brzyk of the Nowy Theater in Łódź (premiere: 4.12.2015). The author stresses that the director only brings out the main plot lines of Władysław Reymont's novel – in her opinion the performance is like a handout summary of the text. Wąsik takes a critical approach to the director's conservative rendition of Reymont's novel – she points out the performance's weak portrayal of the context of antisemitism, xenophobia, and poverty. She does appreciate, however, the interesting strategy of casting most of the actors in dual roles.
Paweł Schreiber. Chanan, Lea, and Middle School
Paweł Schreiber reviews Anna Smolar's Dybbuk (Polski Theater in Bydgoszcz, premiere: 4.12.2015). First he situates S. Ansky's text in the contemporary framework of the play. He notes that the contemporary touches are not entirely effective. He does, however, laud the director for her skillful use of the “theater in the theater” motif (Dybbuk performed by middle-school students) and for showing the students' and teachers' complex responses to Jewish culture, which is shown as incomprehensible and remote.
Karolina Leszczyńska. What Do the Victims Want?
Rape: Voices was created on the initiative of the STER Foundation for Equality and Emancipation and was directed by Agnieszka Błońska (premiere: 7.12.2015 at Powszechny Theater in Warsaw). Sylwia Chutnik wrote the script, based on interviews with women who have experienced sexual violence. The performance is a weave of stories told by several women. These stories intertwine in private lives and in the courtroom. The actresses (professional and amateur) are so authentic in their roles that one might well gain the impression that they are telling their own stories. Only two actresses create theatrical characters, the naive Little Red Riding Hood and the older woman, who experienced sexual violence at different stages of their lives.
Beata Kustra. A Life-Giving Drop of Water
Beata Kustra reviews Paweł Świątek's Constant Prince (S. Jaracz Theater in Łódź, premiere: 30.10.2015) in the context of computer games and contemporary political and economic problems. She points out that the battle for Ceuta – which turns out to be a water tank in this production – is a struggle for the real lives of other people. She also reads the play in terms of the present refugee crisis and the global problem of the future, i.e. water supply shortages. Following the play's suggestion, she compares the character of the Constant Prince in Paweł Paczesny's interpretation with the role played by Ryszard Cieślak in Jerzy Grotowski's famous staging of the play in 1965.
Aleksandra Haduła. The National Small Talk
Aleksandra Haduła reviews The Wedding directed by Radosław Rychcik at Śląski Theater in Katowice (premiere: 8.01.2015), based on the work by Stanisław Wyspiański, and Aleksandra Łojek's reportage series Belfast: 99 Walls of a Room. The author details how the director uses the Polish national drama to speak of the conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. She points out that the identities and stories of the figures appearing on stage are somewhat vague. She appreciates the project for its spectacular staging concepts, but has a critical take on the manipulation of The Wedding, which, adapted to fit a foreign context, significantly adumbrated, and filled out with new scenes, becomes a marginal part of the production.
Patryk Czaplicki. Diplomacy, Let Me Live
Patryk Czaplicki reviews The Comediandirected by Agnieszka Olsten(Stefan Jaracz Theater in Łódź, premiere: 18.12.2015), pointing out the unusual casting decisions: the main role was, contrary to the text, given to an actress (Agnieszka Kwietniewska), and the innkeeper was played by the theater director (Sebastian Majewski). The author believes that these decisions transported the setting of the drama to Łódź, which is branded as provincial and insensitive to art. Czaplicki lauds the actors, who do a fine job of making contact with the audience, and recognizes Kwietniewska's effort in working the highest emotions and skillfully registering the ambiguities of Bernhard's text.
Natalia Brajner. Being an Instrument
Natalia Brajner writes of Death and the Maidendirected by Ewelina Marciniak (Polski Theater in Wrocław, premiere: 21.11.2015), stressing the grotesquerie of the sex scene that begins the performance, being the artists' ironic commentary on the atmosphere of media scandal. The author highlights the feminist context of the play, which problematizes issues of the objectification of women in a patriarchal society. Outlining the dramaturgical structure of the adaptation, Brajner perceives the self-destructive nature of the female characters, who renounce their sovereignty. The sexuality depicted in various ways is interpreted as an indispensable, yet dangerous element of social relations.
Maria Bałus. The Chaos of History
Maria Bałus begins her review of The End of History (CDN Théâtre de Lorient, La Colline, premiere: 13.10.2015) by describing the set. She then writes of the speech in the opening scene, taken from Gombrowicz's “The Case against Poetry,” which serves as a point of departure for staging the unfinished drama History. Bałus mentions the plot lines concerning cultural otherness and homosexuality, which are signaled but undeveloped. She takes a critical view of the scene that introduces the debate on the end of history motif, in the form of monologues by various thinkers (Hegel, Derrida, Marx, and Fukuyama all appear), and the alternately parodical and tear-jerking depiction of the history of Europe, with Poland in the role of the victim.
Natalia Jakubowa. “Lulu,” or: The Collapse of the Wor(l)d
Natalia Jakubowa describes Alban Berg's three-act opera Lulu, directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov (Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, premiere: 25.05.2015). The author mostly focuses on the protagonist of the title, comparing her with other figures in literature and film, such as Isolda, Colombina, and the false Maria from Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Jakubowa points out that the director is not interested in Lulu's origins, and that the social issues Tcherniakov depicts in the performance do not explain the metamorphosis of the title protagonist. She interprets the transparent corridor/labyrinth built on stage as Lulu's tunnel of consciousness. Jakubowa also places the staging in the context of Tcherniakov's other productions and his favored stage solutions.
Katarzyna Osińska. Unspoken: “The Three Sisters” in Novosibirsk
Katarzyna Osińska begins her review of The Three Sisters directed by Timofyey Kulabin (Krasny Fakiel State Academic Theater in Novosibirsk, premiere: 11.12.2015) by describing the first scene, guiding the reader into the mood of a play filled with pop-culture references. She calls attention to the phonosphere of the production, in which the protagonists are deaf-mutes using sign language, and quotes the director's statements on the motivation for this choice. The reviewer describes the set design, which alludes to the drama's time frame, and analyzes the protagonists' relationships. On the whole she finds the production to be moving, and praises its ability to draw out the meaning of Chekov's work.
Marta Kacwin-Duman. Every Era gets the Shakespeare It Deserves?
Marta Kacwin-Duman reviews R+J directed by Saszko Brama (premiere: 22.09.2015) presented as part of the Divadelna Nitra festival. She notes that Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is treated as no more than a scaffolding for the events on stage. One of the play's central motifs is the competing views from east and west Ukraine, shown from the perspective of the main protagonists, who have to find their way through an environment of growing aggression and media chaos. The author describes the use of sound in the play, weaving the cries of young rebels fighting for their right to freedom and happiness, into moody ballads or lyrical lullabies. She does indicate, however, the Ukrainian audience's lack of readiness for Brama's experimental theater, which tends to address issues that are uncomfortable and ignored.
Tomasz Fryzeł. “The War Is Over”
Tomasz Fryzeł writes of Peter Brook's Battlefield (Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, premiere: 15.09.2015). The director returns to Mahabharata – a Hindu epic poem written over two thousand years ago – to focus on the events that followed the fratricidal war that forms the center of the work, and to speak of people who survived the cataclysm and who are trying to reconcile themselves to the deaths of their loved ones. The reviewer indicates the timeliness of the performance: with reference to Brook's commentary, he writes that the titular battlefield might be associated with contemporary Syria and scenes of recent terrorist attacks.
Friederike Felbeck. In Search of Lost Conflicts
Friederike Felbeck begins her text on the Impulse Theater Festival (11-20.06.2015, Mülheim an der Ruhr) by describing the financial crisis that touched the festival last year and the figure of Florian Malzacher, who assumed management of the event. Then she provides an overview of the performances invited to this year's festival. Of these, she focuses on two: the euthanasia-themed Ibsen: Gespenster (byMarkus&Markus) and the spectacular Der Ur-Forst project by Hendrik Quast and Maika Knoblich, concerning the environment. The author also examines the blurring of the boundaries between independent theaters and municipal theaters (both find room for experimentation), wondering about the necessity of an independent theater festival and its future editions.
Grzegorz Stępniak. White Heterosexual Men Trapped in Their Privileges
Grzegorz Stępniak reviews White Straight Man (Young Jean Lee’s Theatre Company/Kirk Douglas Theatre, premiere: 20.11.2015). He outlines the dramaturgical style of Young Jean Lee, who staged and directed the drama, defining her work as political and critical toward modern society, which pretends to accept otherness. Going over the plot – the story of a widower and his three sons attempting to maintain family relations after the death of the wife and mother – he notes that Lee deconstructs the myth of masculinity, including power, psychological resilience, and self-reliance. Summing up the text, Stępniak does state that the loss of white heterosexual men's privileges is only superficial.
Katarzyna Winiarska-Ścisłowicz. An Unspoken Experience: Gianfranco Mingozzi's La Taranta as a Documentation of a Tarantism Ritual
The subject of this article is the Apulian tarantist ritual in a film by Italian director Gianfranco Mingozzi. La taranta is a short film, famed in Italy; it is a documentary showing the steps and process of a Salento music/dance exorcism in the 1960s. Based on the contents of the film, the artist makes a complex analysis of the ritual, taking into account its history, paratheatrical roots, and its reception in contemporary theater and the visual arts. Using hermeneutics and cultural anthropology, she finds some remarkably transgressive religious practices, full of suffering, and sometimes downright revolting perversity. She shows tarantism to be “body art” woven into various contexts – religious holiday, social deprivation, and performative process.
Diana Poskuta-Włodek. Pawlikowski's Theater – Retrospection, Reinterpretation
Diana Poskuta-Włodek writes of some books on Tadeusz Pawlikowski published in 2015. Most of her attention is devoted to the collection of articles by Jan Michalik, titled Tadeusz Pawlikowski: The Legend, the Man, the Theater (Historical Museum of the City of Krakow, Krakow 2015). This book depicts Pawlikowski as a person and reinterprets the facts about the artist (Michalik debunks the myth of the artist's wealth and his ties to Reinhardt). The other publications, according to Poskuta-Włodek, only supplement this first publication. Theater Reviews and Opera Chronicles, edited by Agnieszka Wanicka, Anna Wypych-Gawrońska, and Jan Michalik (WUJ, Krakow 2015), focuses on Pawlikowski's interest in musical theater. Tadeusz Pawlikowski and His Theater, edited by Izabela Oleksiak-Wilk (Historical Museum of the City of Krakow, Krakow 2015), is a catalogue describing the objects displayed in the Hipolit House of the Historical Museum of the City of Krakow, and is an attempt to define the form of Pawlikowski's theater.
Olga Katafiasz. Shakespeare after the Cataclysm
Olga Katafiasz reviews the Polish translation of W.H. Auden's Lectures on Shakespeare (Biblioteka Kwartalnika Kronos, Warsaw 2015). The author notes that the Shakespeare lectures contained in the book, delivered in the 1946/47 academic year, are a reconstruction by the writer's secretary. Katafiasz states that the book approaches Shakespeare's works less in terms of Shakespeare scholars' findings than through philosophy and literature, which create a dense and fascinating context for the plays discussed. The author covers the issues which Auden finds most important, such as the concept of the tragic in Shakespeare, marking the caesurae in his work, and the theme of forgiveness, found in almost every lecture. The quoted fragments of the book show how powerfully present the subject of World War II was in the lectures, which were first held only a year after the conflict's end. |