20 Ground-Breaking Directors of Eastern Europe Kalina Stefanova • Marvin Carlson Editors 20 Ground-Breaking Directors of Eastern Europe 30 Years After the Fall of the Iron Curtain Editors Kalina Stefanova Marvin Carlson National Academy for Theatre City University of New York and Film Arts New York, NY, USA Sofa, Bulgaria ISBN 978-3-030-52934-5 ISBN 978-3-030-52935-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52935-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations. Cover illustration: rangizzz / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland THE LIFE-CHANGING THEAtRE OF EAStERN EUROPE “I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.”1 This is how the Turkish Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk begins his novel The New Life. Then he describes how the energy of the book overtook his soul so strongly that he felt as if his body was separating from the chair where he sat reading. At the same time, with his every particle, he remained anchored there, feeling the effect of the book not only on his soul, but on everything that made him what he was. This is exactly how I felt while watching many productions by the directors included in our book. Their impact was so powerful that it was as if light was surging from the stage, its incandescence dazzling my intellect, but also endowing it with brilliant lucidity—I’m only slightly paraphrasing Pamuk here. “This was the kind of light within which I could recast myself; could lose my way in this light; I already sensed in the light the shadows of an existence I had yet to know and embrace,”2 he continues. I remember very clearly all these encounters, when sitting in the hall and eagerly experiencing the new reality on stage, my mind already barely aware that I’m watching theatre, and my whole life changing with every next minute there. (Again, I’m only slightly paraphrasing Pamuk.) Moreover, these productions have made me feel a transformation not only of my own life but of the whole world around me—exactly like his character feels, as described several sentences later. 1 Orhan Pamuk, The New Life (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2014), p. 4. 2 Ibid. v vi THE LIFE-CHANGING THEATRE OF EASTERN EUROPE “The others experienced nothing like it even though they heard the same tales,” Pamuk mischievously quotes Novalis as his book’s motto.3 Not the case with the theatre I am referring to. I dare say it has had a life-­ changing effect not only on me but on many other people, both in Eastern Europe and outside of it. If one has seen the late Lithuanian Eimuntas Nekrošius’ Hamlet (Meno Fortas, 1997), how can one ever forget the scene with the ice block, for instance? When the Father’s ghost takes off Hamlet’s shoes and rubs his naked feet and his hands with ice while telling him what happened—the ugly truth becoming palpably chilling in a very literal sense too. And then Hamlet smashing the ice block into pieces and vowing revenge on the dagger that falls from its very core and onto the fames of the rocking chair set on fre by his father just before he leaves the stage. All that amid omnipresent drizzle and chill, as if permeated into every fbre of the surrounding world… Or another chilling scene of another take on the play: Ophelia’s drown- ing in a canal at the Gdańsk Shipyard, and Hamlet and Laertes plunging to take her out with the background of piercing police and ambulance sirens—in H. by the Polish Jan Klata (2004, Teatr Wybreze). How can one forget the interweaving of so many historical layers and different ref- erences in that production? From the space—Warehouse 42A, a symbol of Solidarity and the coveted freedom, now empty and dilapidated, repre- senting “Poland’s painful past, disappointing presence and uncertain future.”4 To Hamlet and Horatio playing turbo-golf and the Ghost of the Father, clad in the attire of an eighteenth-century Hussar, solemnly enter- ing the building on a horse. From the pretentious French language–pep- pered wine-tasting of the court (a hobby of today’s Polish nouveaux riches), the White Stripes music, and multiple versions of “To Be or Not to Be” performed in a sort of reality casting, to the Bible as the book in Hamlet’s hands hinting at a “To Revenge or To Forgive” interpretation of the main dilemma… Or the beginning of the Hamlet of another Lithuanian, Oskaras Koršunovas (OKT, 2008): nine refections of nine faces in nine dressing-­ room table mirrors in the darkness of the stage and the question “Who 3 Ibid. 4 Alexandra Sakowska, “The Politics of Space – Jan Klata’s H. at Gdansk Shipyard, Warehouse 42A,” Romanian Shakespeare Journal, issue 1, 2013, p. 98. THE LIFE-CHANGING THEATRE OF EASTERN EUROPE vii Are You?”5 resounding frst in a hardly audible whisper, then gradually rising to a crescendo in nine voices. The actors who are to perform the play, sitting with their backs to us, staring at themselves and asking them- selves, and as if us too, since the audience is also refected in the mirrors… These dressing-room tables, the only set, being swirled around by the actors, would turn into a morgue table with the corpse of the Father who would tell Hamlet the truth and in the next minute would become Claudius (one actor speaking in the mirror and immediately afterwards directly to Hamlet); they would also turn into the “tapestry” behind which the court would witness the very real kiss of Hamlet and Ophelia, and then into screens, into the borderline between here and the beyond… How can one forget these mirrors not for mere looks but as “a mousetrap for our inner reality”6—mirrors for souls, that is? Or the startlingly modern interpretation of the play by the Czech Daniel Špinar (Švanda Theatre, 2013), whose fights of imagination have invariably logical and at times even hyper-realistic springboards. In it Hamlet gets possessed by the Ghost after having a joint with Horatio: the lights blink, a door opens on its own and Hamlet falls into convulsions, speaks with another voice and then, still in delirium, writes his Father’s message with his blood on a museum-type of glass case (where the usual attributes of the play—swords, a skull, a set of knight’s armour—are exhibited). The mad Ophelia in this production, as if taken from the streets, will tear your heart: half-naked, in an oversize man’s jacket and with a lipstick-­smeared face, she yells and giggles, while masturbating with a microphone stick. Later on we see her sitting and playing with the dirt inside another museum-type of glass case, short and long, with the sign “mortal remains.” “Whose is this grave?” asks Hamlet, getting out of the big glass case, meanwhile turned into his prison-madhouse. “Mine,” she answers. While part of the grave-scene dialogue follows between them, he sits next to her and, like kids, they throw dirt at each other, and only when she tosses her dirty hair backwards does he realise who she is. Nearly vom- iting because of the shock, Hamlet goes back—two glass cases with two exhibits of despondency in them. And while he says the lines about the river and the willow, she bends over her glass case, “drowns” and lies on 5 In the Lithuanian translation of Hamlet, Horatio asks the Ghost “Who Are You?” Actually, in some Eastern European languages this is a way to ask “Who’s There?” 6 Oskaras Korsunovas, https://www.okt.lt/spektakliai/hamletas/ (accessed 22 March 2020). viii THE LIFE-CHANGING THEATRE OF EASTERN EUROPE her back—already for real in her grave. “I’ve seen dozens of Ophelias,” the Czech critic Richard Erml wrote, “but Zuzana Onufrakova has to be experienced—at your own risk.”7 There is an even more overwhelming scene in this Hamlet: the very end, in which Špinar challenges the paradigm of Jan Kott. Hamlet not only revolts against his role, he literally refuses to play it out. This scene is a real masterpiece, without any exaggeration. Hamlet and Horatio are inside the lit glass case, the only object on a dark stage at that moment, right in the middle.