An Anti-Ranking of 2024’s Defining Moments in Performing Arts
The end of an old year and the beginning of a new one is a time when rankings, personal top choices, summaries indicating what’s best, most famed and most media-worthy spring up like mushrooms after a rain. At Culture.pl, we propose looking back at the past year and highlighting several events in the field of the performing arts that we consider important, although not necessarily most spectacular.
A joint conversation about what we have in common: a debate at the Theatre Institute
Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute, photo: Radek Pietruszka / PAP
Why do we need a Theatre Institute (Instytut Teatralny)? This question was raised on 22 April 2024 as part of a panel discussion organized by the OZZ Inicjatywa Pracownicza (Staff Initiative) regarding the mission, role and potential of this Warsaw institution. This discussion was taking place, incidentally, on the eve of passing its directorship to another person (replacing Elżbieta Wrotnowska-Gmyz, whose term in office was to end on 31 October 2024). In April, an attempt was made at the Theatre Institute by a group of researchers, theoreticians and artists, including Weronika Szczawińska, the minister [of culture] Hanna Wróblewska, Maciej Nowak and Mateusz Pakuła, to map the needs and expectations of the theatre community, also inviting into the conversation the audience gathered at the meeting. The collective and open debate set the prospect of looking at institutional practices as something shared and co-shaped. In October, Justyna Czarnota-Misztal, a theatre pedagogue and culture manager, was appointed to a three-year term as director of the Theatre Institute, basing her programme on such values as teamwork, dialogue across divisions, openness to diversity and the development of networks of cooperation.
Reproductive rights on stage: Gianina Cărbunariu’s play
Scene from ‘Opowieści babć szeptane córkom przez matki’, written and directed by Gianina Cărbunariu, Współczesny Theatre in Szczecin, 2023, photo: Piotr Nykowski / Współczesny Teatr w Szczecinie
Although the play Opowieści babć szeptane córkom przez matki (Grandmothers’ Stories Whispered by Mothers to Their Daughters) premiered in December 2023, the critical discourse around it developed in 2024, and in May the work was presented during the Warsaw Theatre Meetings (Warszawskie Spotkania Teatralne). Why is it worth mentioning? The play, directed by Romanian artist Gianina Cărbunariu, was produced at the Współczesny (Contemporary) Theatre in Szczecin, a self-governing cultural institution, a professional theatre operating on three stages. In the period after 2016 – since the first Black Protests in Poland [a reference to Black Monday, a women’s protest action against legislation that tightened restrictions on abortion, ed] – Opowieści babć szeptane córkom przez matki remains the only play produced by a large institution whose main topic was abortion.
The topic of reproductive rights and the politics of objectifying women may have been one of the key themes in the performances of the Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw – in Oliver Frljić's Klątwa (The Curse, 2017), Maja Kleczewska’s Bachantki (Bacchae, 2018) or Agnieszka Błońska’s Diabły (The Devils, 2019) – yet it was in Szczecin that a theatre piece fully devoted to the topic of the legal regulation of abortion came into being. After projects carried out in smaller centres in 2021 – Have a Good Cry by Magda Szpecht at the Scena Robocza (Workers’ Stage) in Poznań or Powiem to i zobaczę co się stanie (I’ll Say It and See What Happens) by the TERAZ POLIŻ group – the Romanian director’s play produced by a large stage in one of Poland’s largest cities seems to be a breakthrough and certainly marks an important moment in the history of the representation of abortion in Polish theatre.
Finally at home: creation of the Pavilion of Dance & Other Performing Arts
Pavilion of the Museum on the Vistula, photo: Dawid Zuchowicz / AW
In 2024, activities initiated a year earlier relating to the creation of a place and an institution for dance, new choreography, experimental movement practices and other performing arts gained momentum. On 4 April, the Warsaw City Council officially announced the separation of the Pavilion on the Vistula (Pawilon nad Wisłą) as a branch of the Museum of Modern Art, which then, together with the capital city’s Biuro Kultury (Cultural Office) and in cooperation with the Warsaw Obserwatorium Kultury (Observatory of Culture), announced an open call for a curatorial concept for the first, pilot year of the Pavilion’s operation. The management of this place was entrusted to Magdalena Komornicka, a curator responsible for, among other things, the concepts of performance exhibitions introducing dance and movement to gallery spaces.
As indicated in the City Council announcement, work on the pavilion was initiated with the hope that it would be of a processual, not of a one-time nature, which would constitute the foundation for constructing an ‘open and friendly home for artists and a place for regular encounters with dance’. The results of the competition were announced in November: the curatorial concept of the team represented by the producer and culture manager Alicja Berejowska and the choreographer and director Renata Piotrowska-Auffret were recommended for continuing the work. The project will be implemented this year.
The voice of diversity: ‘Rozmowy o OBECNOŚCI w teatrze’
Cover of ‘Rozmowy o OBECNOŚCI w teatrze’, ed. Justyna Czarnota & Katarzyna Piwońska, Centrum Kultury Zamek in Poznań
In the spring, the book Rozmowy o OBECNOŚCI w teatrze (Conversations on PRESENCE in the Theatre), edited by Justyna Czarnota and Katarzyna Piwońska (a review of which can be found on Culture.pl), a publication of the Zamek Centre of Culture in Poznań, supplemented the discourse on visibility, agency and participation in the context of the theatre. This is an exceptional book for several reasons, the main one being its contribution to the discussion of access to resources available to institutions dealing with the performing arts.
Additionally, what the editors of the publication decided to include in the volume were not theoretical texts and scientific analyses but above all conversations with people directly involved in creative work in a way that took into account diversity related to disabilities and risks of social exclusion. The speakers here are instructors, therapists, members of acting groups and their leaders, as well as women who were critics and reviewers observing performances prepared by non-normative groups. Another valuable aspect of Conversations on PRESENCE in the Theatre is the preservation of linguistic diversity and specificity as opposed to proofreading or editorial norms. This publication by Zamek Centre of Culture makes a significant contribution to the still necessary and important conversation about hegemonic structures in the performing arts, the distribution of money, time and space, practices of presence, as well as the very definition of what is the norm.
Celebration & loss: Centrum w Ruchu
Centrum w Ruchu ‘Celebracja’, actions, 2018, photo: Weronika Wysocka / Zachęta – Narodowa Galeria Sztuki
The annual awards from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage were given out in November, and Minister Hanna Wróblewska decided to distinguish Centrum w Ruchu (Centre in Motion) in the Dance category. This was a grassroots initiative established in 2012 as a response by the collective of independent Warsaw artists of dance and choreography to the lack of space for their activities. The minister’s award presented to a project born out of dissent to institutional omission operating in a school building in the Wawer district is an exceptional event in the field of local performing arts and a gesture of appreciation for over a dozen years of work for the benefit of the dance community. The laurels were received at the ceremonial gala by Karolina Kraczkowska, Iza Szostak, Weronika Pelczyńska, Ramona Nagabczyńska and Maria Stokłosa. Unfortunately, a week later, the joy of the award was radically offset by the information that the mayor of the Wawer district had not extended the lease agreement for the venue. Centrum w Ruchu was faced with the loss of its home – a place not only for presentations but above all for rehearsals, meetings, workshops and experimental activities. In response to this news, the collective created a petition regarding its current headquarters:
The Centre is the cultural heart of a part of the Warsaw dance community and builds a choreographic association by actively representing this community. […] We stand in defence of a place that for years has been a space for creativity, education and the popularisation of dance.
At the time of the writing of this text in early January 2025, this letter was signed by almost 1,200 people. Evidence of community support was undoubtedly an argument during the meeting of Centrum w Ruchu representatives with the mayor of Wawer, who declared his provisional consent to an extension of the lease agreement for the space. As Weronika Pelczyńska and Maria Stokłosa say, this is not the end of negotiations. The artists say:
We hope to stay [in our current headquarters, ed] until the end of the year, when we are implementing the last stage of the project ‘Ciało – mój dom’ [The Body Is My Home]: Cultural Education Through Movement, which has been financed by the city budget, as part of which we will organize free classes for adults and families, as well as a social project examining relations between women.
Festival as process & institution: Kireńczuk in Santarcangelo
Santarcangelo Festival, photo: Pietro Bertora
Perceiving a theatre event not as an attractive, short-term event but above all as the culmination of certain processes and the implementation of a broader mission is characteristic of the artistic directorship of Tomasz Kireńczuk, who has held this position in Santarcangelo (the city of the oldest Italian performing arts festival) since 2021. In 2024, the organizers of the Santarcangelo Festival decided to extend the term in office of the Polish curator and playwright for another two years, justifying this move with concern for the continuity of the projects and tasks he has initiated. This is an important event not only in the context of the presence of Polish representatives of the community abroad but also in the face of the phenomenon of the festivalisation of culture, which is characterized by an orientation towards productivity, temporariness and results that can be monetised. The approach of both Kireńczuk and the organizers of the Santarcangelo Festival lie elsewhere. From their perspective, the festival is not a few days of an event after which little remains but rather an institution in a form that sets itself long-term tasks and social goals. As the artistic director said in an interview with Culture.pl:
We certainly do not think of the festival as an event but rather more as an experience. In the case of a festival that has the history, tradition and position [that we have], the issue of mission and role is very important [...].
The selection of the above projects was totally subjective, and its aim was not to give a synthetic outline of the horizon of events in Polish performing arts. It is rather something that can be taken as an authorial ‘anti-ranking’ proposing a different view of the passage of time than the conventional, a view that would undermine the very idea of summarizing.
Translated by Michał Abel Pelczar
