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Plays
Hanna Krall, Jolanta Dylewska
Feverish and Desperate
A film script depicting the fate of four young Jewish women: Gesya Gelfman, Fanya Kaplan, Maria Ejzen and Simone Weil. The first took part in an unsuccessful attack on the tsar, the second - on the governor, and then on Lenin. The third as a girl survived the Holocaust in Poland, and the fourth, although she was war-torn, remained indifferent to the events in the East. The authors ask difficult questions about the moral divergence of the actions of their characters (each of them having the best intentions), but also talk about the tragedy inscribed into their lives. The narration interweaves the motifs and timelines in a sophisticated way.
Antoni Winch
Hanoch Leaves without a Word
The play is a tribute to the work of Hanoch Levin, at the same time being a pastiche of his style. The first part is visionary: Hanoch Levin arrives in a Polish town in order to find his family home, and meets his deceased parents from before the time of his birth. The second part takes place in a Tel Aviv hospital, where the playwright is dying of cancer surrounded by his loved ones, never losing his morbid sense of humor. The author deals here with ultimate and taboo situations, combining the sentiment with the absurd.
Jordan Tannahill
Concord Floral
A story about a group of young people who have arranged a meeting place in an old abandoned suburban greenhouse - they can talk about what they want, smoke the pot, solve their problems with the help of others. But also there a drama of a young girl will take place- her death will horrify some, the others remaining indifferent. Tannahill's play is a story of the cruelty of the adolescents - the intolerance that can lead to the death of the weak, and the lack of remorse that allows for constant search for new pleasures.
Essays, Studies
Joanna Krakowska
So much the worse for the facts!
Basically, there is no such thing as non-fiction theatre or drama. If one accepts the narrowest possible definition that it is a documented account of events or situations that have taken place in reality and are adapted to be played on stage or in front of the camera, then this is the most comprehensive definition. It includes not only performances staged according to documents and transcripts of meetings or court proceedings, but also naturalistic or poetic dramas inspired by factual events.
Marta Bryś
Facts not for real
Recently a number of performances based on reportages have appeared on Polish stage. These very different examples of documentary theatre share the dilemma faced by all the persons involved - how the theatre as a medium resonates with the truth of the reportage, and how this particular type of literature should be staged for its documentary significance to be preserved.
Remigiusz Grzela
For it to become something else, something more
About Hanna Krall. The reporter is demanding. Of herself and of others. She is always well prepared to every meeting with the audience. Each meeting has its own topic, its own dramaturgy, the characters from her reportage that she wants to talk about in this particular place. She often consults her notes to make sure none of the motifs are omitted.
Jordan Tannahill
The Well-Made Play
A chapter from Theatre of the Unimpressed (Coach House Books, Toronto 2015): Eugène Scribe began writing plays in his adolescence and laboured tirelessly until he arrived at a dramatic form that would shape Western theatre for the next two hundred years (and counting): the Well-Made Play.
Marta Keil
Who does the theatre belong to?
In the current political and economic context, the practice of institutional criticism in Poland has become very problematic. How to look critically at institutions that are at risk and need to be defended? It is wrong to raise controversial themes, which may prove to be a bone of contention in the theatrical environment, causing new divisions and weakening even more the status of artists, art producers and institutions themselves. This includes, among other things, the topics of salaries, relationships within the team, the subjectivity of both the artists and the audience of their performances.
Michał Pospiszyl
The art of modern institutions
Adopting the antagonistic genealogy of the modern concept of an institution carries very definite consequences. If today's institutions are the product of a civil war which was started in early modernity, founding capitalist class divisions, their democratization could not and cannot be achieved through a linear historical process, a belief in social progress, or the ever-increasing emancipation. In this context, the fiction of institutions as a space of clear rules, or a privileged sphere of equal and impartial deliberation, is revealed.
Piotr Olkusz
Institutions of imagination and understanding
Napoleon devoted considerable attention to institutions, not just theatrical, realizing that the shape of France would depend on their shape. In France there had been a long tradition of such thinking, started by Richelieu and a long list of evidence that the politics and administration founded on institutions were effective. The evidence of this fact was the France of the period of absolutism, but also a series of European countries that would – in order to modernize their systems - copy French institutional policy as far as they could. Academies, based on Louis’s model, were established in every country that wanted to be modern, alongside with theatres - national institutions.
Antoni Winch
Pilpul
When Hanoch Levin finally found himself in Polish theatre, he quickly settled down there. His phenomenon in Poland consists of a certain intellectual and literary tradition, which his dramas helped to remind and refresh. Thanks to them, it has become quite contemporary, offering a mirror for us and our times. It is a distorting mirror, but it makes it even more expressive.
Columns
Pedro Pereira, Tadeusz Nyczek, Marek Beylin
Varia
Konteksty:
Olga Byrska on the structure of the utopia on the margin of Marine Bachelot Nguyen’s feature Théâtre, pouvoirs et pusissances, „Théâtre/Public”, Avril-Juin 2017.
Notes on plays:
Agnieszka Wolny-Hamkało Post, Csaba Székely Örӧm és boldogság, Katja Brunner Man bleibt wo man hingehört, und wer nicht bleiben kann, gehört halt nirgends hin oder Eine arglose Beisetzung.