Łukasz Twarkowski (born 1983) is a creator of multimedia performances combining theatre and the visual arts. He places his projects in the context of extending reality through multimedia. A crucial element of Twarkowski's creative work is investigating the ability as well as limitations of theatre as a medium and tool of communication. By permanent deconstruction of narratives, questioning the fixed habits of the audience and by meaningful usage of new media, Twarkowski creates a new, original language of stage performance based on multimedia and, more widely, digital technologies. His projects are being programmed at the most important festivals and stages of Europe, among others: Holland Festival, Odéon – Théâtre de l’Europe, Ruhrtriennale, Festival de Otoño de Madrid, Wiener Festwochen, Piccolo Teatro de Milano or Southbank Center in London. Currently, he is an associate artist of Onassis Stegi in Athens.
Twarkowski made his professional theatrical debut in 2011 as the director of Farnielli, written by Anka Herbut and starring Bartosz Porczyk in the role of the legendary opera singer. However, at this time Twarkowski was already known to the theatre audience of Wrocław as the author of Lila Negr, a musical performance narrating the story of a Russian actor, Alexander Vertinsky. Twarkowski invited various artist to cooperate: sculptors, painters, video artists, and creators of electronic music. The viewers were invited to a completely different sort of encounter with theatre. The performance set Vertinsky’s work against the sensitivity of a contemporary artist and the possibilities offered by audiovisual art. As Paulina Chrzan wrote in Dziennik Teatralny:
In the theatre space of Dworzec Świebodzki, a scene with movable walls was set up. The white canvases surrounding its interior looked like an incubator, a shelter, or a place of hiding. Only the shifts of the wall fragments reveal what’s hidden from the viewer’s gaze. And so, first we see a man (Paweł Wenderski). He stands on a platform, singing a song in Russian. […] The viewer gets acquainted with the character’s reality by means of music, concert performances of Vertinsky’s songs, visuals, film projections, and sliding walls which in some sense fragmentize the view of the main character. The moving canvases allow for a confrontation between the images displayed on them and the directly present performers.
Lila Negr was part of the Vertinsky Project, which was awarded main prize of the OFF Stream during the 30th edition of Stage Songs Review in Wrocław.
A theatre stage or a film set?
In September 2012, another project by Twarkowski premiered in Wrocław. Kliniken/miłość Jest Zimniejsza Niż Śmierć (editor’s translation: Kliniken/Love is Colder Than Death) is a play based on the drama Kliniken by Lars Norén and Traumgruppe by Anka Herbut, a work inspired by German cinema of the 60s and 70s. The artists made the film set and a theatre stage merge again, boldly linking the two worlds and two different ways of thinking.
Paweł Soczyński wrote in Dwutygodnik:
The sudden change of plans, using both the micro and macroscale, a rapid leap and slide – in this performance, just like on a tablet screen, zooming in, hyperlinking the content and reloading of images is fluid and natural like a finger movement. It’s real and virtual at once, natural and artificial, organic and binary, it’s both a real and a fictional act. The boundary between the two is transparent like an aquarium glass, separating the viewer from the scene.
Wyspiański, pixels and silicon – Akropolis