From Staniewski's staging of "Iphgenia A...", source: www.gardzienice.org
An auteur theatre project founded by Włodmierz Staniewski in 1977. It has since gained the status of one of the most important experimental theatres in the world, staging an "anthropological" approach to theatre at numerous festivals across the globe.
Gardzienice's performances have been described as "musical theatre", "ethno-oratorios", and "allegorical theatre of song". At the source of their creativity is music, which reflects founder Włodzimierz Staniewski's ingrained belief that musicality is the key "which opens hearts and souls", creating a deep relationship with the performer. "The achievements of Gardzienice come as a wonderful gift", wrote Susan Sontag, "This extraordinary, intransigent Polish group, under the inspired leadership of Włodzimierz Staniewski are, in my view, one of the few essential theatre companies working anywhere in the world today".
The first production to put Gardzienice on the map was Żywot Protopopa Awwakuma / The Life of Archpriest Avvakum in 1981. This performance about the life of a Russian dissident priest was interpreted, particularly during the period of martial law in Poland, as an attempt to provoke "analyses of the Russian soul". Carmina Burana of 1990, seen in the euphoric times of post-communism as a treatise on the changing fortunes of love, expressed through references to various European myths.
For their Metamorphoses, or The Golden Ass of 1997, the group drew directly from Mediterranean tradition, reaching for the novel by Apuleius of Madaura, Dionysian songs, and invocations to the Muses. The group was also inspired by ancient sculpture and ceramics. The studies and exercises preceding the performance aimed to summon the spirit of ancient music and return to the gesture of Ancient Greek theatre. Bronisław Wildstein wrote in the Rzeczpospolita daily newspaper (31 August 2002) that the polyphony of the production gives the idea of Metamorphoses a new meaning and shows how easily Apollo can become Dionysus, with "Tension and ambiguity emerge from every theatrical image, which is also simultaneously a choreographic arrangement, and from every character, from the craft of every actor".
A new period began for the group in 1997. From the popular classic The Golden Ass by Apuleius, Staniewski developed the show Metamorfozy / Metamorphoses. The protagonist is turned into an ass and then, thanks to an initiation into the secrets of Isis, finds spiritual renewal, allowing him to return to his human body. "All the material which I refer to may seem very exotic and unrelated to our own problems", Staniewski states, "For example, 'Metamorphoses or the Golden Ass' by Apuleius of Madaura or 'The Life of Archpriest Avvakum', however, these works reflected situations occurring in contemporary life".
Gardzienice's performances have been described as "musical theatre", "ethno-oratorios", and "allegorical theatre of song". At their source is music, which reflects the ingrained belief of the theatre's founder that musicality is the key "which opens hearts and souls", creating a deep relationship with the performer. As Gardzienice actor Mariusz Gołaj himself once explained,
Here, in the cavern of theatre, we seek lasting values - we seek regularity, measure, we seek ideas, models. Consistently over two and a half decades, we've studied themes, allegories, works; from traces of the past, from preserved scraps of papyrus and stones, from traditions - foreign and familiar, from cultures - high- and low-brow, we build a labyrinth - the natural matter of a performance.
Tadeusz Kornas described the role of the actors of the group in his essay "Gardzienice's Forefathers' Eve" (Gardzienickie Dziady),
The real hero of "Sorcery" was the throng, the collective body made up of actors. This throng, however, was not a crowd but a group of individualized figures from which Mickiewicz's characters emerged. The performance's musicality and dynamism devour the words. The words are a second level of reception. They are equally important, but the audience has the feeling that the performance's spectacular and spontaneous quality removes them from the scope of attention. They are replaced with melodies, movement, mood. The non-verbal message becomes equivalent to language.
"The achievements of Gardzienice come as a wonderful gift", wrote Susan Sontag, "This extraordinary, intransigent Polish group, under the inspired leadership of Włodzimierz Staniewski are, in my view, one of the few essential theatre companies working anywhere in the world today".
The group has become instantly recognisable thanks to their rigorous studies on indigenous and ancient musical traditions, the powerful physical and vocal techniques of their acting work, their commitment to creating theatre in a natural environment and the focus on mutuality and musicality.
"Gardzienice are one of Poland's - and the world's - premier experimental theatre companies", says Professor Richard Schechner. "They constitute the very heart and essence of Polish experimental and anthropological performance".
In recent years the group has focused its attention on Ancient Greece as the source of European culture. They present forgotten acting techniques of Ancient Greek theatre, drawn from existing iconographic and literary sources, also turning to relics of Ancient Greek music and ideals of physical fitness. The idea is that Gardzienice's practices resurrect tragedy from the spirit of music.
"Staniewski's theatre has made a truly original contribution to the style of contemporary avant-garde theatre", says Warsaw University Anthropology Professor Leszek Kolankiewicz. "A new genre of visual arts was born at the Centre for Theatre Practices. The result is surprising and evokes associations with mediaeval performances. European theatre was probably born twice: in Antiquity and then in the Middle Ages, each time from the spirit of music", he adds.
With each new performance, the Gardzienice Theatre offers a direct reference to the iconography of a particular historical period, reviving it through existing ethnic traditions. The performances are the fruit of lengthy research, bringing to life fragments of ancient music in relation to irregular rhythms of speech, song, and dance originating in the Carpathian Mountains and Ukraine. The texts, musical notation, and imagery do not come from read sources but are retrieved through "a forgotten line of life inside ourselves". Gardzienice's actors have given life to static postures and fragments of music. As ancient texts are brought back to life with innovative sound and movement, the audience is drawn in through a sort of mystical prodding at the core of humanity.
"Our training is drawn from this realistic inspiration", Staniewski says. "I select the moves, turns, curves, and dynamics which have the most impact. Later on, working with the tempo, rhythm and changes in the dynamics, I make use of the same gesture, but try to transform it into an allegorical language that breaks through the realism".
The world premiere of Gardzienice's "Iphigenia at A..." took place on October 7, 2007 at New York's legendary La MaMa theatre as a work-in-progress directed by Włodzimierz Staniewski based on the play by Euripides. Previously, it was presented at the Stary Teatr in Kraków during a review entitled "re_wizje/antyk" in May 2007. In this work Gardzienice restores ancient literature to the stage in its primary form and brings it to life anew. The show continued to be staged at Teatr Polski in Warsaw and enjoyed a guest performance at the OMIX International Theatre Festival in Greece.
Włodzimierz Staniewski was born in 1950 in the village of Bardo near Kłodzko. He was a student of Polish Studies at Jagiellonian University and later at Wrocław University. As a student he joined Krakow's Teatr STU. He worked with Jerzy Grotowski's Laboratorium theatre in 1971-1975. Before founding his own theatre centre, he travelled extensively throughout eastern Poland in the 1970s. His ethnographic research trips were aimed at finding a new, natural environment for creativity, a new, "uncontaminated" audience, and at creating theatre in which the line between low- and high-brow culture would be obliterated. In the 1980s, he organised a number of international symposia attended by representatives of the humanities and theatre around the world. He also gave lectures, including at U.S. universities: Dallas, New Hampshire, New York as well as Mexico City and the Theatre Academy in Paris.
For more information, see: www.gardzienice.org
Source: press materials, www.gardzienice.art.pl, www.culturapolaca.es