THEATER JOURNAL English Issue 2/2015 2
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THEATER JOURNAL English Issue 2/2015 2 / 3 INTRODUCTION GROTOWSKI, WOMEN AND HOMOSEXUALS 4 Agata Adamiecka-Sitek. GROTOWSKI, WOMEN AND HOMOSEXUALS: ON THE MARGINS OF A “HUMAN DRAMA” 17 Agata Adamiecka-Sitek, Leszek Kolankiewicz. CORRESPONDENCE ATTEMPTS AT NEGATIVE PERFORMATIVITY 28 Joanna Jopek. THE PRACTICE OF FAILURE: ATTEMPTS AT NEGATIVE PERFORMATIVITY 37 A COMPELLING GAME: BLENDING FICTION AND REALITY. Oskar Dawicki in conversation with Piotr Kosiewski 43 “A COMPELLING GAME THAT BLENDS FICTION AND REALITY,” OR: ANOTHER FAILED SELF-PORTRAIT. OSKAR DAWICKI in conversation with Katarzyna Nowaczyk And Angelika Topolewska EMBARRASSING PERFORMANCES BY LOSERS 47 Marcin Kościelniak. EMBARRASSING PERFORMANCES BY LOSERS: COUNTERHISTORIES OF POLITICAL THEATER 55 IN THE SPIRIT OF POSITIVE DISGRACE. Justyna Wasilewska in conversation with Katarzyna Lemańska PERFORM OR… 60 Małgorzata Dziewulska. COVERED / UNCOVERED: GAMES WITH MEMORY IN THE PROMISED THEATER 67 Monika Kwaśniewska. FROM A REBEL TO AN EXPERT: THE MEDIA IMAGES OF JAN KLATA A CHORUS 78 Ewa Guderian-Czaplińska. [h 'reı] 82 Agata Łuksza. A CHORUS LACED WITH BRONIEWSKI 85 I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC. Marta Górnicka in conversation with Justyna Stasiowska 88 LIST OF PHOTOS 89 CONTRIBUTORS didaskalia 2 / 2015 3 / Introduction In 2012 we published the first English-language edition of Didaskalia. We now present the sec- ond issue, containing a selection of texts printed in our magazine between 2011-2013. The articles and interviews chosen for publication present the key phenomena in Polish theater, as well as the current academic interests and methodological approaches to theater history and today’s theater in contemporary theater studies. We begin with texts that deal with the reinterpretation of the Jerzy Grotowski’s work. Grotowski, Women, and Homosexuals: Marginal Notes to the “Human Drama” might be seen as an extension of Agata Adamiecka-Sitek’s reflections on gender in Grotowski’s theater contained in the “The Gender of the Performer” (co-written by Weronika Szczawińska), found in the previous English-language issue. This time the critic analyzes Apocalypsis cum figuris (chiefly based on the recording of the performance), demonstrating the dramatization of the misogynist discourse of psychoanalysis and male homosexuality in the play. This work polemicizes with interpretations to date, and serves as a point of departure for discussions on Grotowski’s work and the methodology of researching the history of theater contained in Adamiecka-Sitek’s correspondence with Leszek Kolankiewicz. In the following part we publish texts dealing with the issue of “negative performativity,” which appeared in Didaskalia in the context of works by Judith Halberstam and Bojana Kunst. Joanna Jopek transplants this concept in the context of Polish visual and performative art by Oskar Dawicki, Joanna Rajkowska, and Cezary Bodzianowski, indicating the anti-political, critical poten- tial of failure that it contains. An important point of reference in her study is a pair of interviews with Oskar Dawicki. In these conversations the author less illuminates the process of making the film Perfomer (devoted to his work) than gives extremely different responses to the same questions, continuing his game with the image of the artist. Part Three, on the other hand, is entirely devoted to new Polish theater, though it closely corre- sponds with the issues raised in the preceding sections. In the article “Embarrassing Performances by Losers: Counterhistories of Political Theater,” Marcin Kościelniak focuses on counterhistory theater projects, putting forward the thesis that they “are most insightful in our day in realizing the postulates of political art and are creating the most fascinating and vital movement in Polish theater.” Isolating three models of writing counterhistories for stage, the author analyzes projects by duos of dramaturgs and directors: Paweł Demirski and Monika Strzępka, Jolanta Janiczak and Wiktor Rubin, and Marcin Cecko and Krzysztof Garbaczewski. His theoretical reflections are supplemented by a conversation with Justyna Wasilewska on her work on the title role in Marcin Cecko and Krzysztof Garbaczewski’s Balladyna. The subject of creating the image of the artist returns in two more texts, where it is shifted into media discourse and its impact on the reception of art. In her article “Covered/Uncovered: Memory Games in the Promised Theater” Małgorzata Dziewulska examines promotional strategies in theaters and the media discourse that accompanied two chronologically remote premieres: Jerzy Jarocki’s Dream of the Sinless of 1979 and Krzysztof Warlikowski’s (A)pollonia of 2009. She points out that the discrepancy between the advertisements for the performances before the premiere and the final form of the plays affected the content of the reviews, and ultimately modified the plays themselves. Monika Kwaśniewska, in turn, analyzes Jan Klata’s strategies of self-depiction, tracing his statements in the media. Kwaśniewska wonders what happened to make Klata (presently the director of the National Stary Theater in Krakow) the face of the new political theater, thereafter evolving into the “specialist on Polishness,” an “expert” on national issues. The subject of the texts in the final section is the phenomenon of the choir in contemporary the- ater. The texts by Ewa Guderian-Czaplińska and Agata Łuksza on two projects by Marta Górnicka at the Theater Institute in Warsaw – [‘hu:r kobj+] (“[ˈkɔːrəs əv wɪmən]”) (a play made with amateurs, dealing with the place of women in culture) and Requiemmachine (a performance that uses pieces by Władysław Broniewski to comment on the neo-liberal labor model) – are summed up by a con- versation with the artist. In the interview “I Sing the Body Electric” Marta Górnicka speaks of the concept of the choir, created by individuals. She calls the language in her play a kind of speech cleansed of psychology, recalling the sound of a computer or a machine. The director relates the process of creating a choir, and the work in creating a new actor/performer through training ses- sions during rehearsals. The motif of the theatrical chorus branches out into various themes, lend- ing itself to feminist, historical, political, and aesthetic reflections, concerning the phenomenon of musicality in the theater. ¢ didaskalia 2 / 2015 4 / Grotowski, Women and Homosexuals AGATA ADAMIECKA-SITEK GROTOWSKI, WOMEN AND HOMOSEXUALS: On the Margins of a “Human Drama” Prologue is broken by Elizabeth Albahaca’s whispering. She is soon Before the narrative of “the return of Christ” begins – to joined by Stanisław Scierski, reciting words from the Gospel use Konstanty Puzyna’s term,1 of which Grotowski himself of John on the consumption of the flesh and blood of the Son approved – thus before the self-proclaimed First Apostle, of Man. As he does so, he moves towards the woman on his Simon Peter, gives his comrades Biblical names and ulti- knees and with a sudden movement he whips his coat from mately designates Ciemny (the Simpleton), played by Ryszard his shoulders to reveal his naked torso. Albahaca lays on the Cieślak, as the Saviour – the prologue to Apocalypsis cum ground a loaf of bread wrapped in a white tablecloth, which Figuris plays out. It comprises a scene involving a man and she has been holding from the outset. For a brief moment, the a woman, omitted from Ludwik Flaszen’s “reading instruc- woman with the bundle recalls a mother holding an infant. In tions.” A battle scene – an agon of the sexes, played out in the recording this image is not foregrounded, yet it must have the space of “unconscious logic” and “mythical figurations” made a fairly significant impression if Puzyna recalled from particular to the performance,2 within the archetypal order this scene a girl who “cradles to her breast a loaf of bread as if of a human drama boldly imposing itself from the outset. it were a baby.”4 They meet, standing opposite each other, on The relations between the man and woman are completely either side of the unfolded tablecloth as if at a table, with the defined by relations of sexual difference which determine woman placing a knife alongside the bread. As she strikes up their roles within this universalised history of humankind, a Spanish hymn, he begins to masturbate vigorously and after condensed into a single scene. What significance does this a few movements freezes in ecstasy. He ravenously licks his structure contain? How does it interpret masculinity and own sperm from his hands, as if it were the true life-giving femininity, and what ideological code does it apply to gen- nourishment of which John’s Gospel spoke. The woman fol- der constructs? In Ermanno Olmi’s 1979 recording,3 the lows him intently and when, after another series of move- motionlessness of the inert actors lying or sitting on the floor ments his palm again fills with seed, she falls to his hand didaskalia 2 / 2015 5 / Grotowski, Women and Homosexuals and greedily licks it up. This particularly human communion arguments of feminist rebels who in the early 1970s also does not, however, lead to unity or fulfilment, but to a bru- renounced their obedience to fathers and used their texts to tal confrontation. The significant asymmetry revealed here reveal the ideological oppression of women. The female con- reproduces the structure of sexual difference in the classical dition depicted in such texts posits both narcissistic humili- Freudian psychoanalytical interpretation which perceives in ation as an unavoidable consequence of a deficient body, as the female sex only a lack and the related necessity of envy well as the reduction of female sexuality to a reproductive of the life-giving organ – the single sexual organ of which the function in which the woman is expected to find partial com- female sex is an empty inversion. The defective female body pensation for that deficiency, with the child becoming a sub- evokes in the man a fear of castration located in the essence stitute for the penis.