Ziemilski, who created Prologue at Warsaw’s Teatr Ochoty, frequently engages in endevours that border on the performative and visual arts. The artist states that the inspiration for this project is derived from the following quote by Jean-Jacques Rousseau: "Make a performance out of the audience: make them become the actors, so that each one will recognise and like himself in the others, and so that everyone is better united". In Prologue, he invites his spectators to co-create a show which is very much like an intimate meeting.
A group of chance viewers is equipped with headphones and let into the space of the theatre. The participants are not left to themselves. They are accompanied by the Prologue’s voice which resonates in their headphones as it gives instructions and asks questions: Have you ever been drunk in the theatre? Have you ever cried during a performance?
Witold Mrozek commented in his review for Przekrój:
Instead of telling a story, deconstructing a language or building images, the artist offers us being together in one space and one time. He offers an attempt at building a community, which is always created within the theatre anyway, but here, it becomes the central theme.
An article in the December 2011 of the Didaskalia theatre magazine, thus describes the piece:
If we accept the rules and decide to enter the disquieting sphere of absolute honesty, we can really learn something of importance about ourselves, and we will leave the theatre deeply moved by the pertinence of intimate questions and ruthless observations. If we don’t cross this boundary, Prologue will remain an absurd introduction to something that doesn’t exist, a kind of a door that leads to nothing. The peculiar anti-theatre proposed by Ziemilski bases itself, in a paradoxical manner, on a deep belief in theatre’s power – a belief in that kind of theatre which changes the audience’s awareness, inspires, and offers much more than mere laughter or cheap thrills.
The performance had its premiere showing in October, 2011 at Kraków’s Reminiscencje Teatralne (Theatrical Reminiscences) festival. It was subsequently shown in Warsaw, at the State Theatre Academy’s Collegium Nobilium on the 28th of April, 2012.
The Belgian showings of Prologue at the Trouble 8 festival take place between the 30th of May and the 1st of June 2012.
Wojtek Ziemilski is a graduate of the thetre direction programme at the gulbenkian Foundation in Lisboa. He is the author of a performance entitled Small Narration, based on the personal history of his own grandfather, count Wojciech Dzieduszycki - a recognised journalist and music critic whose good name was recently darkened upon the discovery of his collaboration with SB, Poland’s secret police of the communist era. Ziemilski also collaorated with Komuna Warszawa on the Map project and he authored a visual installation entitled Actors at the TR Warszawa. He regularly cooperates with Krytyka Polityczna, komuna// warszawa, Warsaw’s Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, and the Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute. He runs his own blog on contemporary art (http://new-art.blogspot.com) and posts in a daily photo-column on Krytyka Polityczna’s website.
Editor: SRS
Source: www.teatrochoty.pl, photo credits: Yulki Wilam / AFPHOTOLS