Scene from Gospels of Childhood. The triptych (part 3). Photo: Irena Lipińska
Teatr ZAR travels to the United States with showings of The Gospels of Childhood Triptych and a workshop series conducted in Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art and the Charlestown Working Theater in Boston
Poland’s Teatr ZAR uses song, chanting, and movement in their ritualistic work of theater and music that examines birth, death, pleasure, and pain. The performance is staged in three different installations: the first and third take place in the Museum of Contemporary Art Theater, with the audience on stage; and the second takes place in the MCA second-floor atrium.
Inspired by ancient sacred music from the Caucasus and based on texts from the little-known apocryphal gospels and a poem by Polish Romantic poet Juliusz Slowacki, Poland’s Teatr ZAR uses song, chanting, and movement in their ritualistic work of theater and music.
The Teatr ZAR is a multinational group formed in Wrocław, Poland, by apprentices of the Grotowski Institute during its annual research expeditions to Georgia from 1999 to 2003. During these expeditions, the group collected abundant musical material, at the core of which was a group of centuries-old polyphonic songs whose roots can be traced to the beginnings of the human era and which are probably the oldest forms of polyphony. ‘Zar’ is the name of funeral songs performed by the Svaneti tribe who inhabit the high regions of the Caucasus, in North-West Georgia. The Gospels of Childhood Triptych is a seminal work that builds on the nearly half century of teaching and exploration conducted by Jerzy Grotowski. The work is the culmination of artistic director Jarosław Fret and the company’s more than ten years of investigative research.
Jarosław Fret states in his credo on the group’s official website:
I perceive life as music, to which one listens for the remnant sounds of the primordial explosion, the mode by which we start discerning the world when we are still in our mothers’ wombs, through voices that reach us, the voice of a person who is just a sound recognized, where even god enters a woman’s body through her ear and an actor becomes a chord, a multidirectional figure imitating ancient protagonists. I believe that song can condition sight, that song can change the color of a candle’s flame, reveal the ineffable.
Performances by ZAR and the workshop series in Chicago are presented by MCA Stage in association with Goodman Theatre.
Schedule of Teatr ZAR's showings and workshops in the US:
CHICAGO
- 29th of March - 1st of April, 2012
The Gospels of Childhood. Triptych showings
- 31st of March - 1st of April
Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E Chicago Ave Chicago IL 60611
Flesh of Sound workshops
conducted by Jarosław Fret and the Teatr ZAR troupe
BOSTON
workshop series:
Dialogues Through Body and Voice (conducted by Nini Julia Bang, Przemysław Błaszczak), Into the Sound (conducted by Jarosław Fret, Aleksandra Kotecka, Tomasz Wierzbowski), Body as Space (conducted by Matej Matejka)
Boston, Charlestown Working Theater, 442 Bunker Hill Street, Boston
Source: http://mcachicago.org, www.teatrzar.art.pl