Zbigniew Majchrowski. “[Manuscript Illegible]”
Zbigniew Majchrowski reviews Adam Mickiewicz's Forefathers' Eve directed by Michał Zadara, staged at the Polski Theater in Wrocław (premiere: 20.02.2016). The author's critical analysis centers on Zadara's manifesto on Forefathers' Eve (reprinted in the program), and on the history of the work's performances and its historico-literary analysis. The author polemicizes with Zadara's text, pondering the consequences of performing the play in its entirety, according to its numeration and not the editorial and stage tradition, and analyzes how the main protagonist functions in the play. Majchrowski doubts the possibility of staging the text so that it “speaks for itself” instead of being a director's interpretation. He examines the conventions and shifts of focus in the performance, which are meant to serve as a depoliticization and demasculinization of Forefathers' Eve.
Joanna Targoń. After the Premiere
A brief commentary on Michał Zadara's staging of Forefathers' Eve (Polski Theater in Wrocław, premiere: 20.02.2016). The reviewer shows the event from an organizational perspective and covers the audience response and the process by which a community is formed during the fourteen-hour play. Targoń also mentions the critics' reception of this Forefathers' Eve, but unlike them, she congratulates Zadara for his unorthodox approach to the sequence of the parts (from I to IV).
Tadeusz Kornaś. Spruce Trees, Poppies, and a Statue of the Captain
Tadeusz Kornaś reviews Adam Mickiewicz's Forefathers' Eve, directed by Eimuntas Nekrošius (National Theater in Warsaw, premiere: 10.03.2016). The opening description of the set, with the poppy spore of unnatural size, warm lighting, and shape of Vilnius' Mickiewicz monument floating in the background gives us a feel for Nekrošius's aesthetic, which, in Kornaś's view, is charged with a fairy-tale ambiance. The critic describes several scenes – Gustaw's encounter with the Priest and the monologs of Konrad and Father Piotr – to prove that, although the director does not mock the Romantic posture, his staging of Forefathers' Eve rings with horror, a sense of distance, and even levity.
Boris Buden. A Performer after the Theater
In an excerpt from the book Not Just Mirror: Looking For The Political Theatre Today (ed. Florian Malzacher, Alexander Verlag, Berlin 2015), Boris Buden surveys the history of the discussion on the relationship between theater and society. This is the context in which he situates his remarks on Olivier Frljić as a director. Buden defines contemporary theater as a performance, and the basis of Frljić's performative theater is in attempts to confront the viewer with the “shapelessness of social existence, in which creation can no longer (or not yet) be distinguished from disintegration.”
Balkan Macht Frei: Three Conversations with Oliver Frljić
A reprint of fragments of three interviews Olivier Frljić gave to (in turn) Heni Erceg, Rade Dragojević, and Nataliję Miletić. The director speaks, above all, of our capabilities for creating political theater in our day, and how it functions in society, which prefers the comfort of forgetting, promoted in part by the media, to the painful culture of remembering. The topic of how theater functions in the Balkans is raised, with all its social and political entanglements. Frljić talks about Croatia's political system and the social responsibility for politicians selected in democratic elections. He also talks about being a director at the National Theater in Rijeka and the difficulties in working with Croatian artists, whose schools educate them to be apolitical and opportunistic. The director also comments on his work and his place in the German theater.
Nenad Jelesijević, The Complex Tragedy of Illusory Multiculturalism
Nenad Jelesijević reviews The Ristić Complex byOliver Frljić (Bitef Teatar, Belgrade, premiere: 20.09.2015), stating that the project uses post-Yugoslav theater aesthetics in order to deconstruct and examine them. The director's strategies are read as a commentary on the social and political transformations that took place after the collapse of Yugoslavia, and also on the present-day situation of the Balkans, which are attempting to shield themselves from the influx of refugees from the Middle East with a mockery of liberal laws executed through violence. Jelesijević points out the use of pathos and kitsch as tools to analyze societal emotions and stresses the powerful impact of the scenes, which are built on strong images.
Petra Hallmayer. Bring Me the Head of Frank Castorf!
Petra Hallmayer reviews Balkan Macht Frei by Oliver Frljić(Residenztheater w Munich, premiere: 22.05.2015), describing how strategies developed on the basis of the play correspond to the director's stance toward the German theater system and his entanglements within it. Firljić's play opposes opposes the Bosnian who is put on display because the audience expects him to make entertaining commentaries on Balkan war trauma. Hallmayer focuses on the scenes with the greatest emotional and political impact, pointing out that Frljić's gestures that sparked outrage and provoked violent audience responses in the countries of the former Yugoslavia resound only with the powerlessness and anger of the director when presented in Munich. The author criticizes the director's tactics as inappropriate and ineffective.
Joanna Zielińska. Art Vs. Bullets – Culture and Theater in Sarajevo during the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-1995)
Joanna Zielińska describes how culture was made in besieged Sarajevo. She forwards the thesis that the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina was urbicide – the attacks were mainly aimed at demolishing important sites for the cultural identity of the local society. The author defines the function of art and the role of theater as places of gathering and maintaining a community in a cultural, emotional, and material sense. She proves that in besieged Sarajevo there was a movement called “city art” – the space of Sarajevo determined the aesthetic and rhythm of the artistic activities. She also proves that the besieged city itself was the stage for art events and activities. Zielińska primarily looks at the relationship between theater and everyday life, and traces the theatrical repertoire of the time.
War Theater in Times of Peace: Nihad Kreševljaković in conversation with Joanna Zielińska
An interview with the director of Sarajevo's War Theater. Joanna Zielińska focuses on the functions of the Sarajevo War Theater during the besieging of the city in 1992-1996. She asks about the censorship in theater in Bosnia and Herzegovina, theater criticism, and the role of art in the contemporary country. Zielińska also delves into the profile of SARTR – its repertoire, audience, and its place in liberated Sarajevo. An important part of the conversation is the history and memory of events from the siege of the city in the context of how SARTR functions at present.
Jakub Papuczys. The World Championship in West Germany and Polish “Modernity” of the Gierek Decade
Jakub Papuczys investigates the phenomenon of the soccer match at Wembley in 1974 in West Germany, showing that it became a cultural performance. He believes that this match was among the events in the history of Polish sports that has the strongest presence in the collective consciousness, occupying a place among the Polish myths. He covers a range of interviews and press articles, formulating the thesis that the Wembley success was seen as a triumph for the Polish spirit and a reward for the wrongs the nation had suffered. He proves that the victory in the West Germany championships strengthened a sense of national pride and revealed Polish complexes. The author also demonstrates how the soccer match of 1974 was manipulated by Edward Gierek.
Katarzyna Osińska. Constructivism in the First and Second Avant-Garde: Kantor – Tatlin – Meyerhold
The subject of Katarzyna Osińska's article is the influence of the Russian theater of the 1920s and 1930s on Tadeusz Kantor. The author shows the artist's interest in the avant-garde Russian theater, which was synonymous with anti-naturalistic “new realism” shaped through the avant-garde and the work of Oskar Schlemmer andKurt Schmidt. She devotes most of her attention to the work of Vsevolod Meyerhold and Vladimir Tatlin. Tatlin's reliefs and counter-reliefs are juxtaposed with Kantor's “poor” objects, and she sees traces of Kantor's bio-objects in Khlestakov's saber-wielding in Meyerhold's play. The author also shows the artist's changing stance toward these movements and ideas, focusing primarily on constructivism.
Katarzyna Fazan. Kantor Redivivus: Art as a Battlefield
Katarzyna Fazan focuses on the contradictions in Tadeusz Kantor's work and in the artist himself. She traces the path of Kantor's theater from the avant-garde and anti-aesthetics to anti-art, and finally to plays that could be described as fictionalized biography and historical post-memory. The author points out the destructive, aggressive language of Kantor's statements, calling his work a “struggle” in social, political, and artistic categories. Drawing from the work of Jacques Rancière, Fazan suggests the thesis that, although Kantor's theater did not comment directly on political reality, it was political: the artist created an opposition between art and authority.
Karolina Czerska. Tadeusz Kantor: Toward a “Theater of the Invisible”
Karolina Czerska calls attention to Tadeusz Kantor's statements on the “invisible theater,” which was never unequivocally defined by the artist, though he returned to it at various stages of his work. The article focuses on the first half of the 1970s. This is the period that saw Kantor's conceptual emballage, Cambriolage, an “ephemeral action” held in Dourdan, a staging of The Shoemakers in Malakoff, and the premiere of The Dead Class. Then, too, Kantor wrote Loi du paravent, in which he pondered the role of the “intermediary” in theater; he also planned to devote a chapter of the French edition of his writings to the relationship between “realness” and “the invisible.” The “invisible theater,” according to the author, is the expression of Kantor's uncrystalized yet persistent reflections on attempts to go beyond the visual.
Zuzanna Berendt. Kantor's New York Stories
Zuzanna Berendt reviews the play Kantor: Downtown (Polski Theater in Bydgoszcz, premiere: 13.11.2015), the result of a month-long search for traces of the reception of Tadeusz Kantor's work in New York, carried out by Wiktor Rubin, Jolanta Janiczak, Joanna Krakowska, and Magda Mosiewicz. The author calls attention to the construction of the play, based on a montage of interviews filmed with American avant-garde artists and a spatial model of a play based on Kantor's Dead Class. Apart from investigating the reception of Kantor's work among such artists as Penny Arcade, Ozzi Rodriguez, and Jill Godmilow, the most important theme of the play is the economic aspect of how theater functions. The artists analyze this in terms of the Cricot 2 Theater, the Downtown artists, and finally, contemporary repertory theaters, such as the Polski Theater in Bydgoszcz.
Marta Kufel. The Democracy of a Forgotten Name
Marta Kufel writes of the Impossibility of Presence exhibition at Krakow's Walery Rzewuski Museum of the History of Photography (29.10.-31.12.2015). Apart from the three photographs which are key to the Theater of Death, it brings together photographs from the plays of Tadeusz Kantor, as well as photographs from museum's collections, which demonstrate iconographic similarities to the artist's family photographs. The author analyzes the ties between the Theater of Death and the photographs, and explores their mutual status. The most interesting part of the exhibition, to her mind, is outside the museum building – the museum's photographs scattered around Krakow. The author examines the ontological status of photography in the city space, saying that the exhibition's creators have achieved “a dramatization of the city as a space of death.”
Olga Katafiasz. Where Is Caesar
Olga Katafiasz reviews Julius Caesar directed by Barbara Wysocka (Powszechny Theater in Warsaw, premiere: 23.01.2016), pointing out the significant cuts in the text. In addition, she points out the references to contemporary politics in the play, which Katafiasz sees as reflecting the populist behavior of the conspiracy theorists who plan to eliminate Julius Caesar. The critic also notes the essential function of the viewers, who are caught up in the action as witnesses. She builds associations with the style of the 1980s, prompting reflection upon the system transformation.
Katarzyna Waligóra. Seven Thousand Mountains
Katarzyna Waligóra analyzes Schubert: A Romantic Composition for Twelve Performers and a String Quartet, directed by Magda Szpecht (Dramatyczny Theater in Wałbrzych, premiere: 27.02.2016). The author starts with the motif of the material aspect of music, the body, and space. The performance is divided into four parts – like the d-minor quartet – which adapt FranzSchubert's Death and the Maiden through different movement strategies. She also mentions the theme of the composer's illness and his preparations for death, with its counterpoint of the actors' witty performances.
Maksymilian Wroniszewski. The Ruins of Meaning
A review of Fahrenheit 451 directed by Marcin Liber and staged at Wybrzeże Theater in Gdańsk (premiere: 6.02.2016). The main subject of the article is the allusions and borrowings from literature which are woven into the play. The two main points of reference are Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's 1984. The text also highlights issues of the postmodern communication impasse, which the play's creators have added to the dystopian image of the world that emerges from the original novel.
Paweł Schreiber. Playing at the Limits
A review of The Limits directed by Bartosz Frąckowiak (Hieronim Konieczka Polski Theater in Bydgoszcz, premiere: 27.02.2016). Paweł Schreiber perceives the diversity of methods and channels of communication used in the play, and Frąckowiak's characteristic fragmentary and unstructured style. The reviewer believes that the most interesting part of the performance is the dichotomy between the words and the taut and emotional movement (skillfully rendered by the actors). He does criticize, however, the extremities of the narrative, the clash between simple leftist theories and radically utopian visions. Schreiber also has a skeptical take on the use of European perceptions of refugees.
Beata Kustra. A Dream of California
Beata Kustra reviews Paweł Wodziński's Grapes of Wrath, based on the John Steinbeck novel (Polski Theater in Bydgoszcz, premiere: 16.01.2016). She hazards the thesis that the open ending of the performance and the director's abandonment of the hopeful finale of Steinbeck's novel might suggest that the Joad family represents contemporary migrants. Kustra points out the spare set design and the musical layer of the play, demonstrating that the text is most important in Wodziński's Grapes of Wrath. She thinks that the judicious selection from Steinbeck's novel means that this play can be read as an attempt to diagnose the crisis in the capitalist era.
Piotr Olkusz. A Shout from the Court
Piotr Olkusz reviews a graduate play at the PWSFTviT Theater School directed by Anna Augustynowicz (Theater Studio of the Film School in Łódź, premiere: 7.11.2015). The author points out that the main theme of the performance is not the difference of the main protagonist, but the condition of the court, representing both the state and church powers. Though the author notes a connection between the figure and the reality on stage and the present socio-political situation in Poland, he concludes that Augustynowicz's play makes no radically anti-clerical statements. The undefined character of Iwona proves, in turn, that the state and the Church cannot gain full power over an individual's sense of freedom and conception of religiousness.
Dawid Dudko. The Case of Daniel B.
A review of The Confessor, directed by Natalia Korczakowska (Studio Theater in Warsaw, premiere: 11.02.2016). Dawid Dudko describes the episodic narrative in which motifs from Henry Bean's film The Fanatic blend with sung fragments of Passion Play dialogue. Dudko takes a critical view of the incoherently constructed script, which fails to develop through its accumulation of situations, and correspondingly, does not problematize the phenomenon of the phantasm, while superficially dealing with the characters, making them less than credible.
Piotr Dobrowolski. Mothers of Scorched Earth
A review of Trojan Women, based on the Euripides tragedy and directed by Kamila Michalak (Polski Theater in Poznań, premiere: 4.03.2016). Piotr Dobrowolski stresses the limited dynamics of most of the figures on stage, who seem like trapped marionettes. To his mind, this tactic should be interpreted as an allusion to the situation of contemporary refugees. Dobrowolski perceives Michalak's characteristic combination of opera aesthetics and a theatrical narrative – sound plays the most important function in the performance, defining the identities and emotions of the protagonists. The reviewer also stresses the symbolism of the predominantly red set, which could be a sign of the recent Trojan catastrophe or proof of the love of the survivors for the fallen.
Patryk Czaplicki. Sent to the Devils
A review of the play Everybody Gets What He Believes in, directed by Wiktor Rubin (Powszechny Theater in Warsaw, premiere: 12.03.2016). Czaplicki's text focuses on the socio-political dimension of the performance – the presence of the round table where, through voting, the audience responds to a wide variety of questions. The author points out that the common denominator of the plots and strategies used in the play is the theme of being trapped by the necessity of choosing. He also stresses the performance's criticism of the concept of citizenship based on consumption, mainly in the urban guerilla interventions inspired by Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, the novel that served as the main inspiration for the play.
Katarzyna Niedurny. A Middling Excursion
Katarzyna Niedurny reviews The Lake, directed by Yana Ross (TR Warsaw, premiere: 4.03.2016). The author stresses the passivity and artificiality of the protagonists representing the “middle class” and their ease in dealing with the tension generated by the looming apocalypse. Here, fear of the end is sublimated into small talk between friends relaxing by a lake. Niedurny takes a critical view of the chaotic narrative which multiplies the plots without tying up their loose ends, and deprives the play of crucial contexts by universalizing the reality.
Tomasz Fryzeł. A Shakespearean Game of Thrones
Tomasz Fryzeł describes Kings of War, directed by Ivo van Hove (Toneelgroep Amsterdam, premiere: 5.06.2015), based on Henry V, Henry VI and Richard III by William Shakespeare. The author examines the play's strategies to make Shakespeare's texts resemble the contemporary viewer's experience (e.g. stylistic references to film, historical and documentary TV series, soap operas, and political thrillers). The subject of the play is power: bringing on stage three radically different ruling figures, the director inquires into their origins and essence. Fryzeł notes that van Hove’s play has anarchistic potential – it prompts questions concerning the foundations of social structures.
Marcin Bogucki. The Clemency of Titus and the Crisis of Democracy
Marcin Bogucki reviews the opera The Clemency of Titus directed by Ivo van Hove (Wielki Theater – National Opera in Warsaw, premiere: 16.01.2016), calling attention to the world of politics it depicts. The narrative of the play is based on peeking behind the scenes of power structures and politicians' lives, with reference made to House of Cards. The author indicates the elements of staging: the stylish costumes, lavish interiors, contemporary technological gadgets, and the constant presence of cameras. Though this appears to resemble the television series, instead it takes the form of a fantasy which serves to distance the protagonists from reality. Bogucki criticizes the one-dimensionality of the characters, which, when paired with the reduction of the historical context of the work's origins, steers the production toward being an Enlightenment treatise that suggests oversimplified methods of overcoming the crisis of democracy.
Mateusz Chaberski. The De(con)struction of a Virtual Star
Mateusz Chaberski reports on a concert by Hatsune Miku, the world's most famous hologram songstress, at the Transmediale Festival in Berlin (2-7.02.2016). The author describes the various parts of the performance, recapping the history and mechanics of this digital art project and the technologies it uses. Chaberski also mentions how the artists describe the aim of this project, stating that “observing the deconstruction of the ideal music star, the audience realizes that Miku is merely a hollow vehicle upon which we project our collective fantasies.” On this basis, he criticizes them for misunderstanding the function of the digitally-generated figures of contemporary culture and the attempt to set boundaries between correct and incorrect ways of experiencing new art.
Katarzyna Tórz. Unstable Reality
Katarzyna Tórz describes three dance performances staged during the last edition of New York's American Realness festival (January 2016): Future Friend/ships byKeith Hennessy, whose theme is the war in Syria; Sara Shelton Mann's solo project Sara (the Smuggler), a compilation of question on the essence of choreography and her mission as an artist and a person; and AL13FB<3 by Fernando Belfiore, in which the human body, music, and light are put on an equal footing. The author notes that, despite the varied themes, actions, and staging strategies, all the performances presented oscillated around the motif of producing new spaces of reality and memory.
Thomas Irmer. The Simple Debunking of a Terror-Inspiring Book
A review of Rimini Protokoll's Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf, Volumes 1&2 (premiere: 4.09.2016, at the Kunstfest Weimar Festival). Thomas Irmer outlines the political context tied to the creation and social resonance of Mein Kampf, mentioning that the text's copyrights expire in 2016. He also mentions the new publication with academic notes on the historical reality of the time, seeking to prevent the text from having a dangerous impact. Working on this production, the Rimini Protokoll artists gathered publications of Mein Kampf from various countries over the space of many years, and struck up a dialogue with the experts analyzing the text. The pose some key questions concerning the book's significance and function in the contemporary world.
Friederike Felbeck. Another Kind of Courage
Friederike Felbeck reviews Marta Górnicka's production of M(other) Courage, based on Bertolt Brecht's drama (Staatstheater Braunschweig, premiere: 25.09.2015), seen through the lens of the current situation in Germany. The author points out the visible allusions to Angela Merkel and her role in the migrant crisis in Europe, or to the spread of cheap prostitution. Felbeck calls Górnicka's play an analysis of the present in Germany, and the subjects she addresses are the nation's painful backbone. The critic focuses on the musical dramaturgy of the production, provided by a choir of professionals and amateurs.
Stanisław Godlewski. Scratch on an Ornament
Stanisław Godlewski reviews Jenůfa byLeoš Janáček, directed by Alvis Hermanis (Wielki Theater in Poznań, premiere: 26.02.2016). The author chiefly describes the staging of the performance, calling special attention to the set design and visual solutions. Outlining the plot of the opera – the story of an unhappily enamored and abandoned girl who gives birth to a child out of wedlock – Godlewski notes that Hermanis focuses on the relationship between the individual and the local society. The facade, a village immersed in Moravian folklore, is a space of both beauty and violence in Hermanis's production.
Natalia Jakubowa. Our Lady Macbeth from Sex and the City
Natalia Jakubowa describes Dmitri Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk, directed by Dymitr Chernyakov (Opéra de Lyon in co-production with the English National Opera, premiere: 23.01.2016). The author points out the contemporary look of the opera adaptation – the action takes place in everyday European middle-class surroundings. Jakubowa examines the role of the music as a complement for the action on stage. She also points out the differences between Chernyakov's adaptation and Shostakovich's original opera, mainly visible in the introduction of the Katherine character. The author sees this protagonist as a symbol of the Third World and nature that generates death.
Departing from Theater: Magda Hueckel in Conversation with Katarzyna Niedurny
This conversation between Magda Hueckel and Katarzyna Niedurny opens with a discussion on a theater photobook published by the Zbigniew Raszewski Theater Institute: Hueckel_Teatr. Niedurny raises the subject of the autonomy of theater photography and how stage photographs function, serving both marketing and documentary purposes. The subject of the dual authorship of a theater photograph is broached – these works, after all, always draw upon the aesthetics of the play established by the theater artists. The photographer, who was behind many of the pictures in the photobook, speaks of how she selects photographs, and justifies her choices for the edition of the publication, as well as the desire to publish a book, which was tied to the lack of theater photography outside professional circles. In this conversation she outlines the specifics of her work in theater and the methods she uses.
Joanna Wojnicka. Meyerhold – The Actor, I – The Engineer
This article describes the book Eisenstein on Meyerhold, published inPoland in 2015 (Akademickie Sedno Publishers, Center for Russian Dialogue and Understanding, Warsaw) – the first work of its kind for many years, as Joanna Wojnicka stresses, made up of Sergei Eisenstein's statements on Vsevolod Meyerhold. The author attempts to delve into their mutual relationship, showing the disdain of the Stalinist authorities as a shared element of their biographies (Meyerhold was a victim of the Purges, Eisenstein lost the right to make films). Wojnicka outlines the fragmentary nature of the publication (journals, articles).
Agnieszka Dauksza. All That Glitters Is Not Gold: On the Overuse of the “A” Word
Agnieszka Dauksza writes about słowo/obraz terytoria publishers' recent Leksykon archiwum afektywnego [Lexicon of an Affective Archive](curators: Giulia Palladini, Marco Pustianaz, ed. Katarzyna Tórz, Gdańsk-Warsaw 2015). The publication was created on the initiative of the pair of curators, and includes twenty-five articles they commissioned. Dauksza critiques the abuse of such terms as “affect” or “trauma” without reflection on the historical traditions of these concepts. The author does, however, attempt to perceive the value of the publication as well, whose main attraction is the descriptions by the artists (particularly Warning/Ostrzeżenia by Rabih Mroué ) |