DIE VIERTE WAND #011 - iTheaM (original) (raw)

The ERC PuppetPlays project : contribution for a non-linear history of the European theatre

Open Research Europe

This article is a presentation of the ERC Advanced Grant project PuppetPlays - Reappraising Western European Repertoires for Puppet and Marionette Theatre (GA 835193). After a short overview of the project itself, it begins with a definition of puppetry, based on the phenomenon of double vision. Then it explains the choice of the corpus limitations, describes the variety of the available resources, and underlines the great discrepancy in the amount of material available in the different countries. The article continues with a brief overview of the role played by puppetry in the wider frame of performing arts: how much can we consider that puppeteers developed specific repertoires? What kind of differences can be observed between puppet or marionette theatre and actors’ theatre? The answers to these questions differ in a considerable way according to the cultural and sociological contexts: sometimes puppet and marionette theatre were the only forms of performance allowed, and they ac...

Didaskalia Theatre Journal - English issue nr 2

In 2012 we published the first English-language edition of Didaskalia. We now present the second issue, containing a selection of texts printed in our magazine between 2011-2013. The articles and interviews chosen for publication present the key phenomena in Polish theater, as well as the current academic interests and methodological approaches to theater history and today’s theater in contemporary theater studies. We begin with texts that deal with the reinterpretation of the Jerzy Grotowski’s work. Grotowski, Women, and Homosexuals: Marginal Notes to the “Human Drama” might be seen as an extension of Agata Adamiecka-Sitek’s reflections on gender in Grotowski’s theater contained in the “The Gender of the Performer” (co-written by Weronika Szczawińska), found in the previous English-language issue. This time the critic analyzes Apocalypsis cum figuris (chiefly based on the recording of the performance), demonstrating the dramatization of the misogynist discourse of psychoanalysis and male homosexuality in the play. This work polemicizes with interpretations to date, and serves as a point of departure for discussions on Grotowski’s work and the methodology of researching the history of theater contained in Adamiecka-Sitek’s correspondence with Leszek Kolankiewicz. In the following part we publish texts dealing with the issue of “negative performativity,” which appeared in Didaskalia in the context of works by Judith Halberstam and Bojana Kunst. Joanna Jopek transplants this concept in the context of Polish visual and performative art by Oskar Dawicki, Joanna Rajkowska, and Cezary Bodzianowski, indicating the anti-political, critical potential of failure that it contains. An important point of reference in her study is a pair of interviews with Oskar Dawicki. In these conversations the author less illuminates the process of making the film Perfomer (devoted to his work) than gives extremely different responses to the same questions, continuing his game with the image of the artist. Part Three, on the other hand, is entirely devoted to new Polish theater, though it closely corresponds with the issues raised in the preceding sections. In the article “Embarrassing Performances by Losers: Counterhistories of Political Theater,” Marcin Kościelniak focuses on counterhistory theater projects, putting forward the thesis that they “are most insightful in our day in realizing the postulates of political art and are creating the most fascinating and vital movement in Polish theater.” Isolating three models of writing counterhistories for stage, the author analyzes projects by duos of dramaturgs and directors: Paweł Demirski and Monika Strzępka, Jolanta Janiczak and Wiktor Rubin, and Marcin Cecko and Krzysztof Garbaczewski. His theoretical reflections are supplemented by a conversation with Justyna Wasilewska on her work on the title role in Marcin Cecko and Krzysztof Garbaczewski’s Balladyna. The subject of creating the image of the artist returns in two more texts, where it is shifted into media discourse and its impact on the reception of art. In her article “Covered/Uncovered: Memory Games in the Promised Theater” Małgorzata Dziewulska examines promotional strategies in theaters and the media discourse that accompanied two chronologically remote premieres: Jerzy Jarocki’s Dream of the Sinless of 1979 and Krzysztof Warlikowski’s (A)pollonia of 2009. She points out that the discrepancy between the advertisements for the performances before the premiere and the final form of the plays affected the content of the reviews, and ultimately modified the plays themselves. Monika Kwaśniewska, in turn, analyzes Jan Klata’s strategies of self-depiction, tracing his statements in the media. Kwaśniewska wonders what happened to make Klata (presently the director of the National Stary Theater in Krakow) the face of the new political theater, thereafter evolving into the “specialist on Polishness,” an “expert” on national issues. The subject of the texts in the final section is the phenomenon of the choir in contemporary theater. The texts by Ewa Guderian-Czaplińska and Agata Łuksza on two projects by Marta Górnicka at the Theater Institute in Warsaw – [‘hu:r kobj+] (“[ˈkɔːrəs əv wɪmən]”) (a play made with amateurs, dealing with the place of women in culture) and Requiemmachine (a performance that uses pieces by Władysław Broniewski to comment on the neo-liberal labor model) – are summed up by a conversation with the artist. In the interview “I Sing the Body Electric” Marta Górnicka speaks of the concept of the choir, created by individuals. She calls the language in her play a kind of speech cleansed of psychology, recalling the sound of a computer or a machine. The director relates the process of creating a choir, and the work in creating a new actor/performer through training sessions during rehearsals. The motif of the theatrical chorus branches out into various themes, lending itself to feminist, historical, political, and aesthetic reflections, concerning the phenomenon of musicality in the theater.

Foreword to Studia Dramatica, 1/2018 (special issue)

Studia Dramatica, 2018

The paper presents the history of Romanian theatre, beginning with the creation of the first Romanian itinerant theatre company, at the middle of the 18 th century, to the present. It is intended as a foreword and a chronological framework to this special issue of Studia Dramatica. The year 2018 is the centenary of the union of Transylvania, Banat, as well as of Bessarabia and North Bukovina with the Kingdom of Romania. The " Great Union " at the end of the First World War, as known in Romanian historiography, crowned the Romanians' movements of national and cultural emancipation from the ward of the Habsburg Monarchy (followed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire), of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, movements initiated in the second half of the 18 th century and intensified in the 19 th. Given the celebration of the centenary of the Great Union, we intend to dedicate an issue of the journal Studia Dramatica to Romanian theatre, which we seek to revisit not only festively, but also critically. The history of Romanian theatre is slightly longer than one century: the first Romanian itinerant theatre company was created by several Transylvanian students, from Blaj, at the middle of the 18 th century, the century of the first attempts to create dramatic texts in Romanian. The first theatre shows in Romanian, in Moldavia and Wallachia, were performed in