Polish Theatre in 2020: Will There Ever Be Another Year Like It?
For theatres and other spaces presenting live performance, the pandemic has restricted their most fundamental feature: to facilitate the meeting of artists and audiences, at the same time and in the same place.
In this sense, of all of the arts, live performance has suffered the most during the pandemic and its resultant lockdowns. That doesn’t mean, however, that this year has been an empty or a lost one for theatre and performance.
Our contemporary reality, dominated by the commodification of art and – as a consequence – its over-production, had already prompted the realm of theatre, dance and performance to seek alternative modes of survival. This has included not only institutions, but also (and even more) individuals, who, as a large group of freelancers, form part of the ‘precariat’.
This said, let’s take a look at what’s happened in the performing arts over the last 12 months.
Silence before the… silence
On 12th March, a week before Poland’s first confirmed case of COVID-19, a decision was made to close theatres and other cultural institutions. While the reopening in June made it possible to present and attend shows and performances again, that didn’t mean a return to ‘normal’. Required mask-wearing, like limits on the number of audience members, became the new reality. November brought another end to the possibility of communing around live performance. As of now, the nearest future of the theatre remains unknown.
Poster for ‘Gracjan Pan’ (Mr Gracjan), directed by Cezary Tomaszewski, 2020, photo: Capitol Theatre in Wrocław Before the threat of the pandemic was announced, and then the pandemic itself, some creators managed, luckily enough, to present their premieres. In January, at the Studio Theatre, it was possible to see, amongst others, Malina – an improvised collective creation inspired by the yogi Malina Michalska. There was also Gracjan Pan (Mr Gracjan), directed by Cezary Tomaszewski, and Krótka Rozmowa ze Śmiercią (A Brief Chat With Death), a performance from Gniezno, directed by Marcin Liber. In January, we could catch Krzysztof Garbaczewski’s Boska Komedia (The Divine Comedy), as well as Halka, directed by Mariusz Treliński, and Kapitan Zbik i Żołty Saturator (Captain Zbik and the Yellow Carburator) at the Syrena Theatre. In March, Magda Szpecht presented Wracać Wciaż do Domu (Keep Coming Home) at TR Warszawa.
These were the last of the year’s performances which took place under normal circumstances – without seats removed from use, without having to sign documents about the state of our health, and without wearing masks and sanitising our hands. Work on many productions had to be suspended, their futures uncertain. Some projects had to cancel their rehearsals just days or weeks before their planned premieres.
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Scene from ‘Boska Komedia’ (The Divine Comedy), directed by Krzysztof Garbaczewski, 2020, photo: Magda Hueckel / Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw
At the beginning, there was, of course, chaos: no one could say for certain what awaited us or how long the theatres would be closed. A number of institutions rushed en masse to substitute their live performances with online showings. Barely two weeks after the theatres were closed, the first micro-premieres of Projekt Kwarantanny (Quarantine Project) took place – a joint initiative of the Studio Theatre and Komuna Warszawa (Warsaw Commune). Here, a number of artistic duos presented small-scale ‘quarantine projects’, including Klaudia Hartung-Wójciak and Witold Mrozek, Marta Malikowska and Wojciech Brożek, and Weronika Szczawińska and Piotr Wawer. One of the initiative’s requirements was that the performances be created by only two people, who had to be from the same household.
Joanna Szczepkowska’s Teatr Pudło (Box Theatre) presented a scathingly accurate commentary on our hasty attempts at supplanting the experience of live theatre. The actor, also the director of the Warsaw Na Dole (Downstairs) Theatre, shared a video of less than three minutes in length, but which manages to contain the absurdity of the entire situation in which theatre artists had found themselves. Sitting inside a textured box, holding up its ‘roof’ with one hand, Szczepkowska declares that she ‘hasn’t been wasting any time’, as she has come up with a way to continue her institution’s activities. The awkward way she supports the cardboard, accompanied by her assurances that this is the germination of a theatrical situation, can be treated as a comic response to stubborn attempts at moving performances ‘do onlajnu’ [‘online’, in Anglicised Polish]. ‘For now, this is the situation’, Szczepkowska shrugs, as she sits in the falling-apart cardboard box. Thus, she simultaneously mocks the systemic, theatre-world conditioning of compulsory productivity – which mustn’t waver under any circumstances, and which must always produce visible, preferably tangible results.
Thankfully, this state of affairs became the subject of a wide-ranging and attentive criticism – one concerned above all with health and societal safety, and not with the continuity of production. An overriding need to demonstrate solidarity was expressed by those such as Weronika Szczawińska, the author of this year’s 27th March World Theatre Day address. In her director’s speech, she emphasised the importance of solidarity, care and collaboration:
Text
Yes, we are needed; yes, we are creative; and we really don’t need to constantly prove that with feverish over-production.
Author
Weronika Szczawińska, trans. LD
Piotr Morawski, in his text ‘Musimy Zwolnić’ (We Must Slow Down), also wrote of the need to cultivate care and concern for others. The researcher pointed to the attempt at sustaining a regular life for the theatre online as a conservative one, which serves to uphold the principles of productivity and competition.
Artists like Aleskandra Jakubczak, Małgorzata Wdowik, and Jakub Skrzywanek also spoke about the need for political caring and for a space for careful assessment of the situation theatres faced this spring. Skrzywanek, in a conversation with Katarzyna Niedurny, said: ‘It seems to me that production isn’t the most important thing now; instead, it’s giving yourself time to think’. Biennale Warszawa, in turn, brought attention to the need to support freelancers. In March, it announced a residency programme which did not focus on productivity, with no requirement to present any finished work.
In April, Poland’s Ministry of Culture announced its ‘Kultura w Sieci’ (Culture Online) programme, with 60 million zł to be shared amongst institutions - and only 20 million for artists themselves. Those who had lamented over-production and the thoughtless shift to virtual presentations could not have rejoiced at the thought of the Ministry’s supporting more than 2,000 additional online projects. But the programme was an undoubtedly great help to the wide range of people who had seen the pandemic take away their livelihoods almost overnight. And, of course, not all the ideas realised through the programme were simply online presentations in imitation of the dynamics of live theatre.
Amongst those projects realised as part of ‘Kultura w Sieci’ was an initiative from the dancer-choreographer Aleksandra Osowicz. Her ‘Choreografia w Sieci’ (Choreography Online) was conceived as a platform to systematically present Polish choreographers and their achievements. But its key component is the Leksykon Polskiej Sztuki Choreograficznej (Lexicon of the Polish Art of Choreography), where the biographies of individual creators are enhanced with short interviews.
In this field, a May initiative called Przestrzeń Wspólna (Common Space) also proved essential. (The project was not presented as part of ‘Kultura w Sieci’, but I am including it here as another important dance-choreography initiative.) The informal working group was founded by artists, researchers, critics and curators, and it has met on Zoom 13 times (every other week) so far in order to discuss dance and choreography. Przestrzeń Wspólna – as an open, grassroots, horizontal initiative – has proposed a non-hierarchical model of sharing and building collective knowledge. Each meeting was based on a reading, chosen by the group, about the arts. The lightly moderated discussion often strayed from theory to touch on fundamental questions about the performing arts in general, as well as working conditions, and the precarious situation of freelance choreographers, which the pandemic only served to emphasise. The group, which brought together people from dance and performance, turned out to be a space of natural support.
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Scene from ‘I Tak Nikt Mi Nie Uwierzy’ (Nobody Will Believe Me Anyway), directed by Wiktor Rubin, 2020, photo: Dawid Stube / Fredro Theatre in Gniezno
The ‘return to the theatres’ in June – which is typically the last month of the theatre season – took place, of course, in a different reality. With the limit on the number of attendees, and required mask-wearing, it was impossible to forget the current circumstances. The first post-lockdown performances were strange to experience, and even uncomfortable: the seats taped over with construction tape appeared to be part of the scenery itself, while the thinned-out, masked audience was quite frightening to behold. The theatrical convention of chit-chat in the foyer and at post-show banquets had also suddenly disappeared.
One of the first premieres in the ‘new normal’ was I Tak Nikt Mi Nie Uwierzy (Nobody Will Believe Me Anyway) from the Rubin/Janiczak duo at the Fredry Theatre in Gniezno. Given the limits on audience numbers, the show’s premiere was stretched over three days in order to present it to an ordinary full house. In the summer, understandable attempts were made at reviving performances which had been suspended in the springtime. The fruits of these efforts included Solaris, directed by Marcin Wierzchowski at the Ludowy Theatre (19th June), Dobrobyt (Prosperity) directed by Árpád Schilling at Warsaw’s Powszechny Theatre (10th July), and Cezary Tomaszewski’s Powrót Tamary (The Return of Tamara) at the Studio Theatre (15th August).
September saw the presentation of Wesele na Bródnie (The Wedding at Bródno), which had also been suspended due to the pandemic – a collective performance conceived by Paweł Althamer, directed by Agnieszka Olsten, and with dramaturgy by Roman Pawłowski. The hours-long Wesele, intended as a response to the straw-mulch dance in Wyspiański’s The Wedding, began in a clearing at the Bródnowski Forest. It turned out to be an unpretentious meeting, an opportunity to simply be together in a group, and to create a colourful march [the audience was given bright-pink poncho suits], eat a meal, and catch a breath after the months of isolation. Rambert: Tryptyk (Rambert: Triptych) premiered on 27th September – with a very limited audience, due to the city of Sopot’s location in a declared ‘yellow zone’. This was the next project in the Terytoria Choregrafii – Nowe Szlaki Awangardy (The Territory of Choreography – The New Path of the Avant-Garde).
It was also possible to see Aleks Baczyński-Jenkins’s Untitled (Holding horizon) in the conditions of the pandemic reality, and in the framework of his 2018 Frieze Artist Award. Dramaturgically straightforward, the performance was based on the movement of the ‘box step’, which forms the basis of a number of social dances. As is characteristic of Baczyński-Jenkins’s work, the show was characterised by a non-normative affect. Originally, Untitled (Holding horizon) was imagined as a durational work, or one concentrated on the passage of time, without a clear beginning or end. At the Nowy Theatre, however, given the requirements like social distancing for audience members, it had to take on a conventional theatrical dynamic, and not one where the viewer could actually decide how long to watch each performance – each ‘slot’ was made to be an hour long.
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Scene from ‘Drama’, choreography, dance & costumes by Paweł Sakowicz, 2020, photo: Marta Ankiersztejn / C / U 2020 Festival
The first post-lockdown ‘offline’ theatre festival was Sopot Non-Fiction, one of the only festivals in Poland which is devoted entirely to documentary theatre (22nd-29th August). In a conversation before the post-festival celebration, Adam Nalepa, one of the festival’s curators, emphasised that the ultimate goal was to create a space for real encounters.
Earlier in the fall, we also saw the first live performances of the Ciało/Umysł (Body/Mind) festival, which had taken place online since June – including the Prosto z Wnętrza [Straight From the Inside] series of talks, and Lekcje Tańca na XXI Wiek (Dance Lessons for the 21st Century). One of the event’s premieres was Paweł Sakowicz’s Drama, a piece inspired by Romanticism; Iza Szostak, Katarzyna Wolińska, Marta Ziółek, and Ilona Trybuła also presented work. Warsaw audiences were also able to check out the Polish premiere of Isadora Duncan, created by the Belgian choreographer Jérôme Bel.
In the first days of autumn – during the short period before a ‘yellow zone’ was also declared around Warsaw – the II Kongres Tańca (Second Dance Congress) also took place. It was one of the events realised in an increasingly widespread ‘hybrid’ mode – the panel component took part both live (at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews) and on the Internet. One of the results of the Congress was the successful implementation of one of its most important postulates: to divide the categories of ‘dance’ and ‘theatre’ in the Ministry’s subsidy programmes. This was an extraordinarily important step for the autonomy of dance in Poland; up until now, dance had to compete with theatre’s very high symbolic status, which has long been superior to that of dance and choreography when it comes to visibility and prestige (which, of course, is largely determined by financial support in the first place).
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Scene from ‘Nad Niemnem: Obrazy z Czasu Pozytywizmu’ (On the Niemen: Images from the Time of Positivism), directed by Jędrzej Piaskowski, 2020, photo: Natalia Kabanow / Osterwa Theatre in Lublin
Autumn passed with a feeling of ‘making up’ for things. On the one hand, this was understandable; on the other, it was overwhelming. The number of events (not only theatrical events, but also openings, presentations, meetings, film screenings…) cascaded over our Facebook feeds. The calls for mindfulness and for dropping out of the ‘race’, which had so marked the spring, along with their declarations against over-production and over-presentation, resounded now only faintly.
Again, we observe the two sides to this situation: while there was an apparent need to return to ‘normal’, at the same time, we saw an overwhelmingly thoughtless repetition of a situation which had, until a few months prior, been the subject of complex criticism. The rushing machine of it all stopped once more in November, when further regulations were introduced which suspended public gatherings. And so, theatrical life went back online.
In the second half of November and the first half of December, there was so much theatrical activity on the Internet that you could basically stay put in front of your computer. As many as five large, entirely online festivals took place at the same (or almost the same) time: the Gdańsk Shakespeare Festival, Katowice’s ‘Interpretations’ Festival, the Szkół Teatralnych (Theatre Schools) Festival, the Warsaw Theatre Meetings, and the Divine Comedy Festival.
The last of these events took as its motto ‘The Tender Narrator’, the title of Olga Tokarczuk’s Nobel lecture. This was a rather pretentious move (the word ‘tenderness’ has been inflated in the wake of Tokarczuk’s being awarded the prestigious distinction), but it was accompanied by the very prudent decision not to give out awards, as is usual for the Divine Comedy. Another astute decision was to make all of the performances at the festival free to watch. Given its international importance, this is probably the most significant Polish theatre festival, and this year, everyone could see performances such as: Fiasko (Fiasco), an adaptation of Stanisław Lem’s last novel, directed by Magda Szpecht; Michał Buszewicz’s great, literary Autobiografia na Wszelki Wypadek (An Autobiography Just in Case); and the comedic-realistic (but not ironic!) On the Niemen, inspired by Eliza Orzeszkowa’s novel, and directed by Jędrzej Piaskowski and Hubert Sulima.
But something else entirely took place this fall – something much more important than just another premiere or festival. On 7th October, an article by Witold Mrozek appeared in Gazeta Wyborcza (The Electoral News), which detailed incidents of mobbing and sexual misconduct at Gardzienice, a historic theatre led by Włodzimierz Staniewski. The text included the testimonies of women formerly associated with the company. Then, Dwutygodnik (Bi-Weekly) published the shocking confession of Mariana Sadovska, a former performer with Gardzienice. All of the women who provided testimonies spoke of physical and emotional violence, abuse, sexual harassment, abuses of power, humiliation, and being forced to a super-human level of effort in rehearsals, or being required to take on the role of servants.
That same day, a spokeswoman of the Lublin District Prosecutor’s Office announced that a decision had been made to initiate proceedings for a case on these matters. A discussion broke out in the theatre community, but unfortunately, some remained deaf to the victims’ highly detailed accounts – relying instead upon their own, different experiences, or calling for the recognition of acting (and theatre in general) as simply a ‘tough line of work’. There were also many sad, bitter statements expressing that violence is simply the order of the day in theatre… and not only when it comes to the role of ‘old-fashioned’ men. Some researchers discussed the idea of shared responsibility for this situation – as Monika Kwaśniewska noted, there is no clear ‘code of ethics’ for a theatre scholar.
In light of this discussion, initiated by a group of women who had suffered abuse, the Polskie Towarzystwo Badań Teatralnych (Polish Society for Theatre Research) chose to devote its next meeting to the topic of ethics in the theatre. The exchange of opinions and positions which accompanied Staniewski’s removal represents part of a larger change. It is a shift in the greater paradigm in which ‘genius creators’ are given leeway, while art ‘requires sacrifice’ – and in which those subordinate to ‘great directors’ are, of course, expected to sacrifice themselves.
The exposing of violent practices often takes a massive effort on the part of victims. Undoubtedly, however, the voices that follow serve to inspire still more. It remains to be seen whether such tenacious, collective, and united actions will lead us to a point when violence in the theatre – whether physical, sexual, psychological, or economic – will be no more than a monstrous afterimage of the past. In light of all this, the year 2020 was one of debunking even more of such myths.
I feel that, paradoxically, a lot has happened in this unusual, pandemic year. And it’s no wonder. Let’s take a look at the hard data – Polish theatre sees huge numbers of premieres, and the theatrical life of our country only continues to grow. In the 2008/2009 season, we saw 809 premieres, while a decade later, there were 1,632 – that is, more than twice as many. This is all very difficult to put a stop to, even in a pandemic.
Still, it’s impossible to summarise a year like this one in a synthetic manner, or to draw any real conclusions about it. At the moment of this article’s publication, the restrictions on cultural centres have been extended until at least 17th January 2021, and their future beyond that is unclear. It’s possible that the answer to the question in my title – a paraphrasing of the song Filandia by Świetliki – will in fact be ‘yes’.
Originally written in Polish, translated by Lauren Dubowski, 29 Dec 2020
