Mickiewicz's Forefathers' Eve is a rather surprising choice. What's even more surprising is that the play was first translated as early as 1968. Do we know more about the history of Mickiewicz's play in China?
MJ: It's an interesting story. After the historic staging of Forefathers' Eve by Kazimierz Dejmek, an event which sparked student protests in March 1968, the Chinese decided to see for themselves what this subversive play, which managed to incite so much buzz in Eastern Europe, is actually about. So, they ordered a Chinese scholar of Polish studies to translate fragments of Forefathers' Eve for the internal purposes of the Communist party! Translated by her, 1976 saw Part III of Forefather's Eve as the first publication of European literary work after the Cultural Revolution in China. A full translation of Forefathers' Eve in Chinese was published only recently to coincide with Michał Zadara's production – it was an initiative of the Polish Institute in Beijing. The fact that the text was available in China before, that it was representative for Polish theatre as well as theatrically interesting, surely influenced our Chinese partners in their decision to invite this particular production.
AW: And the decision was made immediately! The Chinese saw Forefathers' Eve during one of the studio visits and they said ‘We're taking it!’ It must be acknowledged here that the Polski Theatre in Wrocław organised that meeting very well, even Chinese captions were prepared. And later, the Chinese partners also ensured that the audience understood the context and was familiar with the history of the work as well as its significance for Polish theatre. The conference was combined with the promotion of the Chinese translation of Forefathers' Eve. Obviously, everyone was impressed by Bartosz Porczyk's spectacular role as Gustaw in Part III of the play.
And thus, from a single production staged all over mainland China, we have progressed to a Polish theatre season in China, starting this April.
MJ: We're going to present the entire profile of Polish theatre: Warlikowski's (A)pollonia, Lupa's rendition of Thomas Bernhard's Heldenplatz, produced by the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre, Paweł Passini's The Hideout, and the biographical Album: Karl Höcker – a play directed by American Paul Bargetto, inspired by the recent discovery in the United States of an album of photographs that belonged to SS officer Karl Höcker, one of the commanders of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
There will be also Jan Klata's An Enemy of the People [based on Henrik Ibsen's play], and we are midst talks about Łukasz Twarkowski's production of Stanisław Wyspiański's Akropolis and Klata's take on King Lear. We will conclude with Mieczysław Weinberg's The Passenger. I was actually surprised with this momentum and I tried to temper the enthusiasm of our Chinese partners. Due to budget constraints, I proposed two or three plays, but in Kraków they said ‘We'll take everything!’ Most of the plays oscillate around topics of war, occupation and the Holocaust. It wasn't a deliberate programme choice, it is just how popular those topics are among Polish artists. We are curious how the Chinese audience, which has also had traumatic experiences from World War II, will relate to them.
There is also Marius von Mayenburg 's Martyr, directed by Grzegorz Jarzyna, a play about the sources of religious fanaticism. Is it interesting from the point of view of the Chinese audience?
MJ: In China, there is a problem with Uyghur terrorists who are Muslims. There are some tensions on both the religious level and the level of the complicated history of the People's Republic of China, so I'm sure the audience will be able to relate to this. At the same time, in Chinese theatre there is no mention of religion at all, it is almost a taboo topic. Tackling it with such consideration as Jarzyna did, in a way that doesn't force any specific answers, can be very interesting.
AW: Martyr is also a story about youthful idealism which gradually and unnoticeably turns into extremism. Our Chinese partners considered it to be a topic with huge potential.
Similar to the political heat of Ibsen's Enemy of the People, directed by Klata.
MJ: It's an interesting story. For several years, we've had good a relationship with the Chinese theatre director Meng Jinghui, organiser of the Beijing Fringe Festival, who has recently become the artistic director of the big international Wuzhen Festival. He came to Poland knowing very well what he was looking for – an intimate production with a strong message, a lot of dynamism and emotional intensity. He saw An Enemy of the People and then we scheduled a meeting with Jan Klata. It will be his debut in the People's Republic of China.
AW: Before us lies the biggest test – the literarily-challenging (A)pollonia and the difficult Woodcutters and Heldenplatz. We are a little scared, but more than once have the Chinese audiences surprised and moved us, for example with their emotional reception towards the productions by the Song of Goat Theatre in Wuzhen, reactions I followed on Chinese social media channels.
MJ: Chinese audiences value sincerity. They are still an elite, a narrow group, the target that we are most interested in. They are interested in culture, they want something more, they are looking for content and values. And they are finding it in Polish theatre. Obviously, we cannot speak about the mass interest in Polish theatre, it's only a fraction of Chinese society. Yet it is a fraction most important for us, which writes texts and discusses cultural developments. There's a lot changing in China thanks to us and our theatre.
Besides Beijing and Tianjin, Polish plays will also be staged in Harbin…
It's a city in northern China, which until the 1950s had a substantial Polish community. They were descendants of Polish engineers and builders of the Trans-Siberian Railway as well as descendants of Siberian exiles from Tsarist Russia. At one point, the Polish community numbered a couple of thousand people. This part of Polish-Chinese history was almost forgotten, it is only recently that it has been revived. Thus, the return of Polish theatre to Harbin has an interesting symbolic value, and we hope it will bring back the memory of our compatriots who once lived in this city.