Andrzej Chyra in (A)pollonia
Warlikowski takes his dramatic, 3-year-old Nowy Teatr production to the 11th edition of the Seul Performing Arts Festival this autumn
Considered one of the leading performing arts events in Asia, the Seoul festival has made its 2012 iconic image be that of the human brain. The organisers state in their introduction to the 11th edition of the event:
"some say that an artist is a scientist who studies the brain unconsciously in his particular way. (...) While complex events happen in an artist's brain, his eyes are fixed on one direction. As you look (..) you might wander where the common destination of us, the audience and the artist would be (...)"
With Greek tragedy as backbone, the first scene opens in the Warsaw Ghetto with Janusz Korczak and the children in his care just before they are sent off to the death camp in Treblinka. Such an opening, fraught with emotion, takes the audience on a journey of cruelty, darkness and deeply into the question of humanity.
Krzysztof Warlikowski’s project is based on classical and contemporary texts, primarily excerpts from Euripides’ Alcestis, the Oresteia by Aeschylus, and Hanna Krall’s Apolonia. By bringing together these texts, Warlikowski seeks to shed light on the ambiguous and sombre history of sacrifice, and self-sacrifice-giving up one's life for another-in particular. Stories of mythological characters ruled by Fate are complemented and reflected in twentieth-century experience with its helplessness in the face of the Holocaust. In the act of sacrifice the executioner becomes no less important than the victim.
Characters such as Iphigenia, Alcestis and Apollonia are all either necessary or accidental human sacrifices, victims of war and fate. These figures illustrate a time when the gods intervened with human destiny, but they arrive on-stage in a world void of divine interventions. With the twenty first century changing the shape of human loss through mass tragedies such as the Holocaust, martyrdom seems to have lost its tragic motif and instead become the disturbing subject of media reports.
Sacrifice is thus the key theme of the Nowy Teatr production. With questions of divine absence and human responsibility, the play serves to poignantly explore the moment at which Iphigenia, Alcestis and Apollonia gave their lives so readily. Warlikowski deems Holocaust as one of the most Polish themes, yet claims that because of their own distorted thinking, Poles have been unable to confront this issue and place it under scrutiny. The director's erudite script also includes fragments of Jonathan Littell's Les Bienveillantes, J.M Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello, Marek Edelman's memoirs Love in the Ghetto and Rabidranath Tagore's drama The Post Office.
(A)pollonia was first staged at the Teatr Nowy in Warsaw in 2009. It has travelled the world with its intricate weaving of classical and contemporary texts to present a grand-scale portrait of civilisation throughout history.
(A)pollonia
Directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski
adaptapted by: Krzysztof Warlikowski, Jacek Poniedziałek, Piotr Gruszczyński
set and costume design: Małgorzata Szczęśniak
music: Paweł Mykietyn, Renate Jett, Piotr Maślanka, Paweł Stankiewicz
songs (lyrics and perfomance): Renate Jett,
lighting: Felice Ross
playwright: Piotr Gruszczyński
video: Paweł Łoziński, Kacper Lisowski, Rafał Listopad.
The performance is staged three times at the Korean festival:
5th of October, 2012 at 6 pm, and on the 6th and 7th of October, 2012, at 3 pm
(A)pollonia is hosted by the Arko Arts Theatre Main Hall
duration: 270 mins including intermission.
For more information about the Seul Performing Arts Festival, see: www.spaf.or.kr
Editor: SRS
Source: http://www.spaf.or.kr, teatrnowy.org.pl