Theatre From Trash: Scenographic Recycling
Behind the buzzwords of the ‘circular economy’ and ‘post-growth’ lies a surprisingly tangible practice: theatre made from what others throw away. Across the performing arts, scenographers are turning discarded objects into stage worlds, transforming waste into meaning. What might have ended up in a landfill instead becomes part of a performance – inviting audiences to see not only art, but their own role in giving things a second life.
Barbarity
Scene from ‘Hindełe, siostra sztukmistrza’ (Hindele, the Conjuror’s Sister), directed by Paweł Passini, photo: Natalia Kabanow / Juliusz Osterwa Theatre in Lublin
‘They look at me like I’m crazy’, said the painter and poet Małgorzata Skałbania in 2017 when she was employed in the art studio of the Juliusz Osterwa Theatre in Lublin. She was the only one, as she emphasized in her statement for Dziennik Wschodni (Eastern Daily), to rebel against the idea of creating the scenography for a performance using books brought in by the audience in response to a call for a collection announced by the theatre. The person who had come up with the idea of a visual setting made up of a dozen or so cubic meters of books was the scenographer Mirek Kaczmarek, co-creator of the performance Hindełe, siostra Sztukmistrza (Hindele, the Conjuror’s Sister), directed by Paweł Passini based on a script by Patrycja Dołowy (premiered on 16 December 2017). The donated books that were collected created a visually impressive structure: the floor and high walls were made of hundreds of volumes, and the ceiling was also lined with books.
The director explained that the scenography contained an important metaphor: ‘Books here are like Jewish tombstones, which were used to pave Polish roads [during the German occupation of Poland in World War II, ed.]. They were also walked on’. However, the previously quoted Skałbania could not be convinced to embrace this vision and announced that she would not participate in the ‘barbarism’ that, in her opinion, was the processing of books into a scenographic structure. The biography of the artist employed at the time in the theatre’s studio that was published on the website of the Brama Grodzka (Grodzka Gate) Centre tells us that she was ‘fired for trying to salvage tons of books donated by the people of Lublin’.
Homage or anarchy?
‘Pilnie kupię biografię’ (Will Urgently Buy a Biography), Dramatic Theatre in Wałbrzych, photo: Tobiasz Papuczys
The Krzysztof Porcelain Factory operated in Wałbrzych for almost two centuries – since 1831. However, inflation effectively cut its life short, and the company was closed at the beginning of 2023. So the February performances of the play Pilnie kupię biografię (Will Urgently Buy a Biography), which referred to the industrial history of the city, were dedicated to the employees of the liquidated plant. The performance by the Teatr Dramatyczny im. Jerzego Szaniawskiego (Jerzy Szaniawski Dramatic Theatre), directed by Krzysztof Popiołek (premiered in March 2021), was created thanks in part to donations from viewers – the beginning of rehearsals was accompanied by an announcement by the theatre that they were collecting ‘white gold’, as Wałbrzych porcelain is sometimes called:
We are collecting objects that have their own history, are taken out of a variety of sets, are incomplete sets or chipped – but also those that are knocking about unused in a cupboard or were an unwanted gift.
In such cases, economy and ecology go hand in hand with the collective nature of the process involving local communities. The set design co-created by the residents of Wałbrzych is, in a sense, a vehicle of memory – a monument to the city’s industrial identity saturated with private stories. Although the very use of porcelain in the performance may arouse mixed feelings – it gets broken by the actresses and actors at the end. As Bartosz Cudak wrote in Didaskalia, this gesture can be interpreted as ‘an anarchist act of breaking away from the achievements of previous generations, which contradicts the assumptions of the project’.
Bring a dried-up Christmas tree to the theatre
‘Macbeth’, directed by André Hübner-Ochodlo, 2022, photo: Piotr Dłubak / Adam Mickiewicz Theatre in Częstochowa
Many people who celebrate Christmas struggle every year after the holiday with the dilemma of what to do with their dried-up Christmas tree. Cities and municipalities organize collections, dried-up trees are also suitable for enriching the compost bin, ecological websites and blogs compete with each other in ideas for planet-friendly uses for spruce trees (e.g. in the form of tea or a bath additive). In 2022, it was also possible to… bring a Christmas tree to the theatre. Such a collection was announced by the Adam Mickiewicz Theatre in Częstochowa with the scenography of the play Macbeth directed by André Hübner-Ochodlo in mind. About thirty natural dried-up trees without decorations were needed. As Joanna Karkoszka, an employee of the theatre’s promotion department, has said, the institution often resorts to crowdsourcing solutions (based on engaging a group of people not professionally connected with the organizer of the collection):
Whenever we can’t find an item in our stock warehouse that the producer asks us for […] we turn to our audience, which has never let us down. I remember that recently, during the pandemic, we were looking for a bathtub, which we also received.
The case of Częstochowa’s Macbeth is another example of combining ecological thought – giving a second life to objects that would otherwise end up in the trash – with strategies from the audience development sphere, building relationships with the audience and expanding its number, opening up to the public and being ready to embrace its ideas.
Waste in the opera
‘Anhelli’, S. Moniuszko Grand Theatre in Poznań, libretto: Dariusz Przybylski, composer’s libretto based on Juliusz Słowacki’s poem, literary collaboration: Margo Zālīte, 2019, photo: Bartek Barczyk / Grand Theatre in Poznań
The Poznań Teatr Wielki (Grand Theatre) made an appeal to its audience to bring in trash, quite literally. The waste was to be used to create costumes and scenography for the opera Anhelli based on a poem by Juliusz Słowacki, directed by Margo Zālīte (premiered in December 2019). ‘Bring us what you don’t need, and we’ll make a play out of it’, the theatre announced. The visual setting of the performance was to include broken toys, washed milk or yoghurt containers, worn-out white clothes and shredded paper waste. For a month and a half, viewers could throw their ‘gifts’ into a basket placed in the lobby, then the scenographic designer Dorota Karolczak would give them a new importance.
It would thus be a kind of upcycling: a processing that increases the value of an object, transferring what usually ends up in the bin into the space of a high-budget production. Light-coloured (blue, white, transparent) waste built the Siberian scenery, but also, as the artistic director of the Grand Theatre Magdalena Kulczyńska said, their presence encouraged reflection on pollution and environmental degradation. The director, who comes from Latvia, claimed that the participation of the audience in collecting materials for the set was a way ‘of experiencing certain rituals together’. In the context of shared rituals, it was also important for the convention of the performance to assume that the viewers themselves would also come to the show dressed in white, co-creating the bright setting of the event.
Socks & CRTs
Polish theatres have had many such campaigns to create visual settings from waste collected from the audience. In February and March 2023, Teatr Lalki i Aktora (Puppet and Actor Theatre) in Łomża collected… socks, which were to be part of the scenography for the play Niesamowite Przygody Skarpetek (The Uncanny Adventures of Socks), directed by Jarosław Antoniuk and based on a series of books by Justyna Bednarek with illustrations by Daniel de Latour. ‘We will be extremely grateful for every sock brought to the theatre. Both pairs and single socks, black and colourful socks, short or knee-high socks!’ announced the Łomża institution. In 2018, the Jaracz Theatre in Łódź was looking for used chairs for Chekhov’s Three Sisters, directed by Jacek Orłowski – in return, you could receive a ticket to the performance for one złoty. Nowy Teatr (New Theatre) in Warsaw, on the other hand, asked its audience for old CRT televisions which were needed for the performance Grupa Warszawska (Warsaw Group), directed by Eglė Švedkauskaitė (premiered in December 2020).
The project Muzeum Dowodów Rzeczowych (Museum of Material Evidence) by the Latvian artists Laura Stašāne and Jana Jacuki, put on by Teatr Rozmaitości Warszawa (Warsaw Variety Theatre) in July 2021 in a private house in Saska Kępa, was an interesting, although very peculiar, way of using objects collected from viewers. This was not a work that could be placed in the context of ‘theatre from trash’ because its material consisted of objects associated with or directly related to women’s experiences of violence. Muzeum Dowodów Rzeczowych is undoubtedly a project that employs the performative dimension of things with which the theatre’s recipients are connected and is worth mentioning due to its ethical context. The artists invited the audience to participate in the exhibition with these words:
If you associate an item with an instance of domestic or relationship violence – emotional, physical, sexual or economic – please donate it to us along with your story, and we will include it in the museum’s collection. It may be something you want to get rid of or an item that was part of an act of violence but would never be considered as evidence by the police or a court; for you, however, it speaks for itself.
Translated from Polish by Michał Pelczar
