A scene from The City of Sleep, photo: TR Warszawa
Together with the TR Warszawa, Krystian Lupa directs the performance based on the novel from Alfred Kubin, The Other Side. The play enjoys its premiere showings as part of the Parisian Festival d'automne on the 5th of October
Krystian Lupa is one of the most honoured and unpredictable Polish theatre artists. Lupa returns to a text written by Kubin in 1909, Die Andere Seite (The Other Side), a fantastic novel set in an oppressive imaginary land, set in an atmosphere of claustrophobic absurdity reminiscent of the writings of Franz Kafka, (who in fact admired Kubin’s novel). Lupa has attempted to tackle Kubin’s text 27 years ago, and the resultant performance was named a "recording of an individuating catastrophe" of the main character, in which all of the logical rules of construction came apart.
Over a period of more than two decades, Lupa has accustomed his audiences to an aesthetic that breaks will all rules as he creates worlds that seems to go on forever, and gradually pull the spectator deeper and deeper inside. The director has also accustomed his followers to abrupt changes in the way he approaches theatre. What form will the new play, The City of Dream, take on then? What change has the artist seen occur over the course of those 27 years? What dream will Lupa dream up for his audiences this time?
In September, some of the answers to these questions were revealed to the viewers of the International Theatre Festival Warszawa Centralna 2012: Mistyfikacje.
The director comments on the performance with the following words:
If one tried to divide the current inhabitants of the planet, the homo sapiens species into pre-relativisitic representatives of the home nineteenthcenturiensis and the relativist homo quasifuturus, in would be precisely in The City of Sleep that these two psychological options came to be bipolar oppositions. The one is escaping into the past and the other into the future, because they cannot bear the present, which is a shapeless and formless time, a TIME OF THE UNKNOWN, A TIME OF BECOMING... The thing is that both these species read the invitation and promise of Patera as a message addressed to themselves, and this is because each representative of a given species perceives reality from the perspective of their own living constellation. Perhaps it is Patera’s trap, as he never determined whether The City of Sleep - and thus, the reality of sleeping and dream, and the dream in itself - is the past or the future. And the malice of this trap consist in the fact that the representatives of the two opposed species, to their own horror, finds exactly the opposite of what they were expecting...
The official premiere staging of the play took place at the Theatre de la Ville in Paris, one of the most significant theatre venues in France. The showings were part of the annual Festival d'Automne à Paris. This festival of contemporary art has been held annually since 1972, with more than forty events spanning from September to December, and an average of 100 thousand viewers.
Following the performance in Theatre de la Ville, François Regnault stated in his review for the franceinter.net:
Krystian Lupa sees in the text a great allegory, drawing on the genre of utopias that promise a better life, as well as figures of the Antichrist and False Messiahs.
Jean-Pierre Thibaudat comments on franceinter.net:
Lupa's theatre branches out and becomes amplified throughout the representation, as an other face of his own life, and of our lives.
An enthusiastic review of the Parisian showings was published on the toutelaculture.com website. The journalist Christophe Candoni comments:
Lupatakes us very far towards sensitive, intangible, neurotic and spookyareas. It is disturbing and scary. This laying bare of the fragility and instability which is performed provokes a mental discomfort. And yet, it is sublime. Nothing in this Lupa presents itself as theatrically effective and yet the more he moves away from the theater of representation, the more that which emerges seems justified. It is humanity that is presented, ambivalent and elusive as it is. Is necessarily complex, but it cuts to the quick.
What a surprising show – it would be better to speak of an experience, and an extreme and unique one – for a spectator who is faced with long tunnels as if they are moments of absolute grace. As the hero went to meet the unknown and mysterious countries, we follow, led by Lupa and his unprecedented actors. Thewinding path of this theater is certainly difficult, as it requires immense attention and availability, but it penetrates gradually intensifies as gets a hold on us. There is also the humor, absurdity, eccentricity, and a crazy sense of freedom. It is the art of Lupa that is fascinating.
City of Dream will be staged in Warsaw on the 10th of November, 2012, in the Hala Transcolor.
Written by Krystian Lupa based on the novel The Other Side from Alfred Kubin. Direction, scenography, light and music design: Krystian Lupa.Costumes: Piotr Skiba.Dramaturgy: Iga Gańczarczyk.
Cast: Jan Dravnel, Jakub Gierszał, Sandra Korzeniak, Magdalena Kuta, Władysław Kowalski, Lech Łotocki, Maria Maj, Małgorzata Maślanka, Henryk Niebudek, Monika Niemczyk, Agnieszka Roszkowska, Piotr Skiba, Andrzej Szeremeta, Tomasz Tyndyk.
The performance is a coproduction of TR Warszawa and Theatre de la Ville, realised with the support of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Dramatyczny Theatre from Warsaw.
Editor: SRS
Source: press release, teatrdramatyczny.pl, www.trwarszawa.pl