Monika Kwaśniewska. The Framework of the Play
This article’s point of departure is the 21st Theater Confrontations in Lublin (7-16.10.2016). Following the curators’ catchphrase – Autonomy / Institution / Democracy – the form of auto-theater described by Joanna Krakowska in the program, and the issues raised in the book by Bojana Kunst and published by the Confrontations festival with the Theater Institute, Kwaśniewska inquires into the various models of relationships between performance creators and the artists and the audiences in collective projects created, for example, through arts residencies or in a repertory theater institution. The author chiefly focuses on the positions of the actor and the viewer.
A Theater on Suitcases: A Conversation with Agrupación Señor Serrano
A conversation with the Spanish Agrupación Señor Serrano led by theater studies students from the Jagiellonian University during the 21st Theater Confrontations in Lublin. The point of departure was two of the group’s plays performed during the festival: Birdie and The House in Asia. The students posed questions concerning the media the artists use, mainly the combination of video and toy figurines animated live on stage. The members of Agrupación Señor Serrano speak of how they choose topics for their plays. They also raise issues of the collective organization of team work in a creative and economic sense, the way the theater operates without a permanent headquarters, and the performance of the plays mainly in the festival circuit and in international residency programs.
Maryla Zielińska. Micro Rule
Maryla Zielińska writes of the Komuna// Warszawa project Micro Theater, curated by Tomasz Plata. The author describes the premises of the undertaking – every invited artist had to create a performance on the subject of their choosing, lasting no longer than sixteen minutes, staying within the budget of 50,000 zloty, and using no technological solutions apart from those established by the organizers. The author describes performances by Anna Smolar, Marcin Liber, Anna Karasińska, Weronika Szczawińska and Piotr Wawer Jr., Romuald Krężel and Monika Duncan, and Wojtek Ziemilski and Wojciech Pustoła.
Monika Świerkosz. The Politics of Goodness
Monika Świerkosz writes of the play The Triumph of the Will by Monika Strzępka, based on a script by Paweł Demirski (Stary Theatre in Krakow, premiere: 31.12.2016). The author compares the performance with the duo’s previous works. She analyzes the various characters, passengers of an airplane that has crashed on a desert island. The survivors break into groups: some of them tell optimistic stories, trying to shake up those who are plunged in sadness. Świerkosz believes that the artists are putting forward a vision of the political based on an “instinctive emotional ethic of compassion.” She praises the production for its humor and energy.
Marcin Kościelniak. The “Good Change” in the Theater of Strzępka and Demirski
Marcin Kościelniak ponders the surprisingly single-minded response of reviewers of Triumph of the Will, which follow the interpretive suggestions of the artists themselves. His article puts forward a different concept: “Demirski and Strzępka try to convince us that the Good Change in their theater arises from compassionate reflection upon the current political situation and the possibilities of art. But what if we were to seek its roots elsewhere, in Strzępka’s words: ‘We’ll be seen as traitors anyway. We’re finishing our friends’ performances, we won’t have our series relegated to the Internet…’?”
Natalia Jakubowa. Vienna Looks East
Natalia Jakubowa writes about the Eiswind/Hideg szelek project byÁrpád Schilling and Éva Zabezsinszkij (Burgtheater in Vienna, premiere: 25.05.2016). Jakubowa describes the performance’s structure, focusing on the expression of the most important theme: the complexities of Austro-Hungarian relations. The crucial female perspective in Eiswind/Hideg links this performance with Natalia Worozhbyt’s dramatic monologue Wo ist Osten? Monologue No. 1/?e Cxi??, shown in the framework of the Vienna Humanities Festival. A byproduct of Worozhbyt’s work on this documentary play about the Donetsk airport was an intimate record of the author’s feelings for a military leader she met there. Natalia Jakubowa calls Schilling’s play and the Ukrainian’s dramatic monologue important voices in problematizing how the East functions in the Western European discourse.
The Canceled Play: Tanja Miletić Oručević in Conversation with Grzegorz Niziołek
The main topic of Grzegorz Niziołek’s conversation with Tanja Miletić Oručević is the play she directed over six months ago, Sveto S ili kako je arhivirana predstava Sveti Sava, in Bosansko narodno pozoriste, alluding to the canceled 1990 performance of Svety Sava (Saint Sava). Niziołek asks about the causes for this and the organizers of the protest in 1990, and about the events that took place in the time in Yugoslavia. Tanja Miletić Oručević explains why she chose to address the topic twenty years later, speaks of the performance’s dramaturgy, and about its reception and the audience’s reactions.
Katarzyna Tórz. A Mess in My Head
Katarzyna Tórz writes on the 56th Mess International Theatre Festival in Sarajevo (30.09-9.10.2016) and the 50th Bitef Belgrade International Theatre Festival in Belgrade (24.09-2.10.2016). Tórz outlines the history of the Sarajevo festival, pointing out that it continued even when the city was under siege. She then writes about the plays presented during the last edition: The Seagull by Oskaras Koršunovas, The Sound of Fire by the Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol Collective, a dance play by Barbara Matijević – Forecasting, and Ubu The King directed by Jernej Lorenci. In the last part of the text Tórz juxtaposes Haris Pašović’s play What would you give your life for? with the Bitef Fesitval’s Riding on a Cloud by Rabih Mroué. The author notes that Pašović’s play has of an impact on the viewer’s emotions than Riding on a Cloud, which investigates the possibility of having a real impact on the world, which is gradually becoming only a network of representations.
Jakub Papuczys. Digging up Hamlet
Jakub Papuczys writes about Hamlet directed by Oliver Frlijić (Zagrebačko kazalište mladih, premiere: 8.03.2016). The author notes that the changes made to Shakespeare’s text entirely alter the significance of the intrigues of the titular protagonist. Frljić creates a world ruled by “violence and naked, brutal force,” while the crime is always visible, which means that Hamlet’s actions and attempts to expose the truth make no sense. His deeds are therefore an act of vengeance or a rejection of this reality. The critic notes that this performance, in which the dead are constantly present in a material and symbolic manner, alludes to the Balkan War.
Dorota Sosnowska. How to Make a Workers’ Theater? Karhan’s Glazier Brigade at the Nowy Theater (1949)
Dorota Sosnowska analyzes the reception of the play Karhan’s Glazier Brigade, which Kazimierz Dejmek directed in 1949 at Łódź’s Nowy Theater, based on a drama by Vaška Káni. Sosnowska analyzes the staging in the context of the transformations of the worker’s identity in the postwar period: the communist authorities effectively weakened it, introducing hierarchy and competition, against which laborers in Łódź factories (among others) protested. She forwards the thesis that while, according to the critics, the play appeared to be Socialist Realist, for the workers it had a social-performative dimension: it allowed them to experience a community and refresh their memories of their recent protests.
Magdalena Zamorska. Choreographic Performance in Post-media Culture
Magdalena Zamorska analyzes the phenomena of remediation, post-media, and post-Internet in terms of contemporary choreography. Interpreting a few selected performances (including THIS by Marta Ziółek, Kantor Downtown by Jolanta Janiczak, Joanna Krakowska, Magda Mosiewicz and Wiktor Rubin, and 3D-ANCE by the Bujakowska & Janus duo), she explains the definitions and the scope of significance of various concepts. Zamorska forwards the thesis that interpretive categories borrowed from art theory and media studies allow us to analyze the process of “reshaping language and strategies of other media by artists working in the new choreography.”
Katarzyna Fazan. An Actor between Media
Katarzyna Fazan analyzes selected strategies for using new media in actors’ work. Drawing from Tino Sehgal’s Ann Lee and Krystian Lupa’s productions, the author discusses the actors’ “internalization” of film materials, he describes the impact they have on the stage status of the performers, and presents methods of producing and using these materials during the rehearsal process. Drawing ties with The Pyre by Gisèle Vienne and to Hamlet and other stagings by Krzysztof Garbaczewski, Fazan writes of strategies of “decorporalizing the condition of the actor” and dismembering or dispersing it through the use of multimedia.
Justyna Stasiowska. Plunderphonics by Ziółek
Justyna Stasiowska writes of the dance performances of Marta Ziółek: Make Yourself (Komuna// Warszawa, 2016) and THIS (2015). The first play thematizes the links between choreography and technology, media, and economics, while the second alludes to the work of Tadeusz Kantor and his tactic of using poor objects as ready-mades. Stasiowska finds strategies in Ziółek’s work that borrow from a tendency in contemporary music called plunderphonics, which involves appropriating the work of other artists and remixing it, in the conviction that this change will improve the preexisting piece. As an example, the critic mentions how Ziółek inserts aspects of club culture into the terrain of the theater.
Łucja Iwanczewska. “Don’t Watch Wajda’s Films!”: Small, Critical, and Alternative Stories
Łucja Iwanczewska ponders the strategies and cinematic decisions of Andrzej Wajda. Her thesis is that the director created a symbolic historical imaginary for postwar Polish society. She states that Wajda’s films are a kind of mediated personal participation in the life of the collective: his cinema “was meant to remind us of the collective’s past, while participation in the past was meant to establish the present, traveling through forms of history and social life.” Iwanczewska believes that Wajda’s films about the war have entered the social consciousness and created a symbolic field for Polish history.
Marta Kufel. Piłate and Another Negative Messianism
Marta Kufel’s article concerns Andrzej Wajda’s film Pilate and Others of 1972, which the author sees as an emblematic example of dramaturgy based on the principle of “revealing reflexive negativity.” Kufel juxtaposes the film with Wajda’s other productions from 1968-76, whose dramaturgy, she feels, has a particular excess and formlessness. In investigating reflexive negativity the author uses, among others, the methodology developed by Mieke Bal in researching the ties between visuality and narrative. The analysis includes, on the one hand, the historical side of the film – the references to the Holocaust and the fall of the Third Reich – and on the other, its anchoring in the Polish socio-cultural reality of the turn of the 1960s and 70s, with particular emphasis on the situation of the Polish Church.
Beata Guczalska. Courage for Brecht
Beata Guczalska reviews the play Mother Courage and her Children directed by Michał Zadara (Narodowy Theater in Warsaw, premiere: 26.11.2016). She provides an overview of the most important stagings of Brecht’s drama. Her thesis is that postwar trauma in Poland has created two Mother Courages: the Mother of the Holocaust and the Mother of the Occupation Period. Guczalska claims that the most prominent motif in Zadara’s performance is the mother-daughter relationship – this is why she focuses on Barbara Wysocka’s role as Catherine and Danuta Stenka as Mother Courage. She argues that Zadara skillfully translates Brecht’s ideas and postulates into the language of contemporary theater.
Tomasz Kowalski. Why Must We Scoff at Dmowski?
Tomasz Kowalski reviews the play The Thoughts of a Modern Pole: Roman Dmowski (An Unauthorized Biography) directed by Grzegorz Laszuk (Polski Theater in Poznań, premiere: 11.11.2016). Kowalski notes that the artists’ strategies in constructing statements on a Polish nationalist authority-figure – Roman Dmowski – mainly involve slapstick and ribbing. He writes that this approach stands in contradiction to Hannah Arendt’s philosophy, to which the artists allude, and voices the concern that taking a whimsical approach to nationalist attitudes precludes us from seeing them as a real threat, making them no more than the butt of a joke.
Jakub Papuczys. (Non)-Stadium Stories
Jakub Papuczys reviews the play Footballers by Małgorzata Wdowik (TR Warsaw, premiere: 18.11.2016). The author concludes that the performance follows the rhythm of dance/sport intermissions, while every sequence problematizes issues tied to how professional football spectacles function, the hierarchies of the players, and the market pricing of the footballers. Papuczys believes that the artists critique the objectification of the footballers, and the stereotypical perception of footballers through the lens of heteronormative masculinity, excluding otherness of any sort. He states, however, that “the play unconsciously replicates the formula it intends to critique and deconstruct. It objectifies in showing objectification.”
Zuzanna Berendt. We Only Want to Show You How Well We Sing
Zuzanna Berendt reviews Hunger directed by Aneta Groszyńska (Stary Theatre in Krakow, premiere: 17.12.2016). The author chiefly focuses on the relationship between Martín Caparrós’ reportage and the play. He notes that the artists explore the efficacy of the literary work in terms of the problem of world hunger and critique the author’s stance in his book. The reviewer mentions the scenes that indicate the artists’ interests: the relationship between the book’s protagonists and its author and readers, and a critique of how people in the West act to help the starving. The author admires how the play articulates the problem of how art represents social issues.
Mateusz Chaberski. A Cosmic Session of Hypnosis
Mateusz Chaberski reviews Cosmos based on Witold Gombrowicz’s novel, directed by Krzysztof Garbaczewski (Stary Theatre in Krakow, premiere: 19.11.2016). He forwards the thesis that the play recalls a hypnosis session. He ponders the use of Gombrowicz’s repetitive language, which serves to express the characters’ existential anxieties in the novel as they search for meaning in the surrounding world. Taking Witold played by Jaśmina Polak as an example, he states that Garbaczewski “attempts to divorce the language from the character’s psychology, focusing our attention on its melody and rhythm.”
Aleksandra Majewska. Somewhere, or: Nowhere
Aleksandra Majewska reviews Anna Smolar’s production of The Worst Person in the World based on the book by Małgorzata Halber (Wojciech Bogusławski Theater in Kalisz, premiere: 26.11.2016). The author outlines the action of the performance, the appearance of the stage, the atmosphere of the play, and the characterizations, and describes the moments when the actors leave their roles and turn to the audience to speak for themselves. The script deals with alcoholism and Natasza’s confessions, as well as social exclusion. The critic states that the play, set in an unspecified AA club, would have had a greater impact if the action took place in a specific place in Kalisz and addressed the issues of the local society.
Katarzyna Waligóra. A Feminism Primer
Katarzyna Waligóra reviews the play Bang Bang directed by Dominika Knapik (Stefan Jaracz Theater in Łódź, premiere: 4.06.2016). The author analyzes how the plot and themes of the source, Thelma and Louise byRidley Scott, have been brought to the stage. Waligóra believes that the director and dramaturge of the play, Tomasz Jękot, did not take full advantage of the affective potential of the female rebellion in the film. The author analyzes the female roles in the play and criticizes the gratuitous use of film quotations and the superficial allusions to feminist discourse.
Beata Kustra. Truth, Lies, and Ruses
Beata Kustra reviews the play Leni Riefenstahl: Episodes of Oblivion directed by Ewelina Marciniak (Śląski Theater in Katowice, premiere: 5.11.2016). The author notes that the performance combines facts about the life and work of the German director with events invented by the creators of the play. Kustra ponders the legibility of the strategies Marciniak applies: the use of masks, the clash between Riefenstahl and Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek or actress Marlene Dietrich. The author sees the play as a ruse by Ewelina Marciniak and the dramaturges (Iga Gańczarczyk, Łukasz Wojtysko) centered on the director of the Third Reich.
Maryla Zielińska. Olympians
Maryla Zielińska focuses on four plays performed during the main stream of the Theater Olympics in Wrocław: The Gospels byPippo Delbono, Wait, Wait, Wait… (for My Father) byJan Fabre, Medeache: On Transgression by Jarosław Fret, and Oh Amour byTheodoros Terzopoulos. The author interprets and presents the differences between the plays. She also notes similarities, e.g. the proximity of the actors to the audience, and references to the Bible or Greek mythology. She also covers the history of the Theater Olympics since 1993, claiming that “in a festival where what counts is the names of the directors, or rather their strategies and creative stances, it is hard to speak of a program theme.”
Stanisław Godlewski. Minefields of Discourse
Stanisław Godlewski writes on three selected plays presented during the “World Is a Place of Truth” Theater Olympics, as part of the “More Than Theater” movement. Writing on Tisza be-Aw by Theater 21, originally presented at the POLIN Museum, Genghis Khan by the Monster Truck ensemble, and Protected Species by Rafał Urbacki and Anu Czerwiński, he chiefly focuses on how they form a relationship between the stage and the audience. The author sees these plays as problematizing the power to create the Other in the viewer’s gaze, requiring him to revise his position on the normative discourse.
Marcin Bogucki. Forefathers’ Eve – A Design for Repair
Marcin Bogucki describes the Forefathers’ Eve: Recycling program – one stream of the Theater Olympics in Wrocław (27.10 – 4.11.2016). Bogucki’s point of departure is an opinion piece by Andrzej Stasiuk examining the present state of All Souls’ Day. The author claims that Forefathers’ Eve: Recycling was an attempt to investigate the Polish cult of the dead, stating that “contemporary Poland seems to be the country of Stasiuk’s Forefathers’ Eve, where cemeteries and bodies are profaned.” Bogucki compares two performances: Swinarski’s Forefathers’ Eve remixed by Jerzy Trela and Forefathers’ Eve: Twelve Improvisations byJerzy Grzegorzecki, seen by Weronika Szczawińska and Agnieszka Jakimiak.
Paulina Rudź. A Third Theater (by Accident)
A report on the Theater Olympics in Wrocław, focused on the Eastern Line (7-13.11.2016) stream. The author describes the performances (Disconnected – Farma v Jeskyni, AFRAID – Studio Matejka and Grupa ProFitArt, A Thousand Languages – Nini Julia Bang, The Mother Project – Kana Theater, Reality Scores – Porywacze Ciał Theater, The Childhood Gospels – ZAR Theater, and Lear’s Songs – Pieśń Kozła Theater), trying to find what they share. She makes an attempt to find the program’s idea of the Third Theater in the Eastern Line productions. She also inquires into the method of selecting plays for this stream and wonders on its appropriateness and the true aim of highlighting Eastern European alternative theater.
Tomasz Fryzeł. A Mistrustful Theater
Tomasz Fryzeł writes on the 9th International Divine Comedy Festival (Krakow, 8-17.12.2016). The author describes some of the performances held during the festival (including Plastics by Grzegorz Wiśniewski, Holzwege by Katarzyna Kalwat, Zapolska Superstar by Aneta Groszyńska, The Institute of Memory (TIMe) by Lars Jan, The Other Play by Anna Karasińska, White Power, Black Memory by Piotr Ratajczak, Zinc Boys by Jakub Skrzywanek, and Orlando by Weronika Szczawińska), analyzing the tensions they create together. He points out the prevalence of self-reflexive themes concerning theater as a medium in the plays.
Katarzyna Waligóra. Play-Film/Film-Play
Katarzyna Waligóra writes on two plays by the Brazilian artist Christiane Jatahy, presented during the 4th International Festival of World Classics: The New Classics of Europe in Łódź (15.10. – 9.11.2016). In Miss Julia based on Strindberg’s drama, and What if they went to Moscow? based on Chekhov, Jatahy explores the relationships between theater and film. The review stresses the technical precision of both productions. She chiefly appreciates Miss Julia as a metatheatrical game, problematizing the presence of the camera on stage. In the adaptation of Three Sisters, Jatahy divides the play into two parts, one of which is seen by the viewers as a live performance, and the other is a film of the play seen in a cinema. Waligóra writes that the director’s “double vision” method brings no earth-shattering conclusions in terms of how we perceive film or a theater production.
Friederike Felbeck. Start Cooking, the Recipe’s on Its Way
Friederike Felbeck writes on the Impulse Festival in Düsseldorf (15-25.06.2016), which is a review of the most important German-language independent theater productions. The author notes that many of the performances concerned the theme of escape. Felbeck describes the play The Ambassador by the Gintersdorfer/Klaßen duo, the performance Evros Walk Water by Rimini Protokoll, the Make Art Policy project by the Public Movement group, and 50 Grades of Shame by She She Pop. The author also describes the festival’s side projects, including Silent University – a discussion space open to artists and scholars who are refugees or waiting for asylum, and thus with no opportunity to continue their academic work.
Marta Kacwin-Duman. Europe’s (C)odes to Joys
Marta Kacwin-Duman writes on the 25th International Divadelná Nitra Theater Festival (23-28.09.2016), which she observes in terms of socio-political events (e.g. the conflict in Donbass). The author describes the Czech production of Slyšení (Interrogation) directed by Ivan Krejcí, addressing the Eichmann trial, the Slovak production of Solo lamentoso, made by Slava Daubnerová, and Roses – a “freak-cabaret” performance by the Ukrainian group Dakh Daughters (directed by Vlad Trotzki).
Martin Bernátek. Tracking Down Names
Martin Bernátek describes the three-day review of Polish dance and performance called Idiom Festival in Prague: “This is Poland / To Polska właśnie” (6-8.10.2016). Based on several performances from the festival he covers its thematic scope and prevailing aesthetics. The author mainly focuses on the body as a medium for negotiating between cultural norms and tactics for enacting one’s own, non-normative identity. Bernátek stresses that the curators “had the courage to open a discussion with the Czech audiences concerning the creation of stereotypical images of Poland.”
Beata Kustra. New Theater, in Other Words…?
Beata Kustra describes the 03 Festival of New Theater – 55th Rzeszów Theater Encounters (18-26.11.2016). The author ponders the definition of “new theater.” Making reference to this year’s festival motto – “The End and… a Beginning” – she describes three plays presented during the event: Being Like Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Stopped Being Afraid and Learned to Love the Uniform byJarosław Murawski, directed by Marcin Liber; Night and Day I Will Miss You by Szymon Bogacz and Zuzanna Bućko, based on Maria Dąbrowska’s Nights and Days, directed by Julia Mark; and Simon Stephens’ play Harper directed by Grzegorz Wiśniewski.
Łukasz Grabuś. Opera with No Heat
Łukasz Grabuś writes about the Warsaw Autumn 59th International Contemporary Music Festival (16-24.09.2016), which was entirely devoted to opera. The author describes the organizational structure of the festival and analyzes the program, noting that it could be read in many ways – such as by the principle of contrasts (e.g. “spectacular stage production vs. ascetic precision of performance”). Grabuś takes issue with the festival motto “in the heat of opera” and claims that the festival formed a space for reflecting on the institutional conditions in which Polish contemporary opera productions are created.
Diana Poskuta-Włodek. Reading the Backstage
Diana Poskuta-Włodek comments on a book by Dorota Jarząbek-Wasyl, Behind the Scenes:The Birthof PerformancesinPolish 19th-cenury Theater (Uniwersytet Jagielloński Publishers, Krakow 2016) in the context of the theatrical backstage in theatrological thought, and the impact of backstage life on creative work. The reviewer indicates the scholar’s methodology, a genetic critique mainly conducted on the basis of documentation of theaters in Lwów, Krakow, and Warsaw. She shows admiration for the author’s thorough research, in particular where previous oversights are concerned; she also appreciates the freshness and creativity in approach to the topic. |