Akropolis. Reconstruction

AKROPOLIS. RECONSTRUCTION
Based on the drama by Stanisław Wyspiański and the performance directed by Jerzy Grotowski
Opening: 11 December 2009, 6.15 p.m., WTW Big Stage

Duration: 195 minutes (one intermission)

Directed by: Michael Marmarinos
Music: Piotr Dziubek
Set: Dominika Skaza
Choreography: Leszek Bzdyl
Dramaturgy: Joanna Biernacka
Assistant director / English language interpreter: Maria Kwiecień
English language interpreter: Anan Szoc
           
Cast:
Anna Błaut, Maria Czykwin, Renata Kościelniak, Katarzyna Z. Michalska, Piotr Łukaszczyk, Dariusz Maj, Krzysztof Zych and Piotr Dziubek

Stage manager:                         Katarzyna Krajewit
2nd assistant director:              Małgorzata Kazińska

„Akropolis. Reconstruction” is an exceptional theatre project in which the creators attempt to build a theatrical museum of our collective memory. A museum that can match 21st century, where the spectator, bombed with all available media, an interactive project member, has to make autonomous decisions what pieces – and in which order – they are going to see. Greek director and Polish actors will take us, like a research expedition, in an extraordinary trip in the search of today’s Polish Akropolis. This unusual visit to the space of acropolis will not only become a research in the sphere of language codes, but also colours and sounds. The text of Stanisław Wyspiański’s drama (from 1904) and Jerzy Grotowski’s production (premiered in 1962) are a kind of guides for the tour. We will need to find out by ourselves, however, to which degree, their experience will be useful for us. The production is supposed to be more than a reconstruction of the concept of „the highest point in a city-state” (etymological  meaning of the word ‘acropolis’) but, first of all, an attempt to re-define it. An attempt to decipher the mechanisms governing our memory, and to rebuild our national identity, collective and individual, attempt to diagnosticate its condition in the end of the year 2009.

OUR SPECIAL THANKS to Mr. Jarosław Fret, Director of Grotowski Institute, and Mr. Bruno Chojak, for their invaluable help with our work while preparing the production.
 

label.reviews2.short

"Everybody has their own Acropolis"
Jacek Wakar, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna nr 13, 20 January 2010

 

"Akropolis. Reconstruction", directed by Michael Marmarinos at Teatr Współczesny in Wrocław, is one of the most original projects currently shown on Polish stages. Its patrons are Wyspiański and Grotowski together. Other conclusions that emanate from the productions are not that obvious.

 

Reconstruction seems to be a trap word. Last year, at the Shakespearean Festival in Gdańsk, I saw the famous "Hamlet" by The Wooster Group. The New Yorkers, led by the director Elizabeth LeCompte, decided to remake the arch-tragedy in the form proposed years ago in the film recording by John Gielgud. The result was a mock drama instead of a rightful production.

 

On the screens, we saw Richard Burton in the role of the prince of Denmark, and in front of him, another actor imitating his gestures, not quite skilfully. Although the show, eaten away by modern technique, was later described as theatre of the new era, I cannot put off the impression that The Wooster Group's haughty session was, in fact, the best example of how theatre is going towards a dead end.

 

Wyspiański – reactivation

 

Michael Marmarinos, at Teatr Współczesny in Wrocław, does not repeat the Americans' error. While it is true that his production is based on Stanisław Wyspiański's and Jerzy Grotowski's works, but it is not their representation.

 

On the contrary, Wyspiański's drama and Grotowski's visionary direction are just a starting point for an original statement. The Greek director renounces a preceptorial tone in it. His "Reconstruction" does not propose the only righteous way to reinterpret classical literature or the production that has already become mythical. It is an orchestrated rehearsal, fixing a laboratory work, charged – by definition – with a risk of error. None of the authors of the Wrocław production phrases here any revealed truth; they prefer to limit themselves to ask questions. Besides, there will be no pathos or large, spectacular gestures in this sphere either.

 

Instead, Marmarinos and his actors propose something that reminds us of exploring areas not very well known until now. They probably rightly admit that Wyspiański's .Akropolis" requires not only a reconstruction, but also reactivation today. That it is possible to tell it with the language of classical theatre, but the deadness of a finished piece will be the price. Similar intuition must have given origin to Grotowski's play, now directly evoked at the Współczesny.

 

River of oblivion

 

A small, shallow pool has been designed for the stage; at the beginning, we see all the performers in it. They sit still, to stand up after a while, ready to take the roles of Wyspiański's figures.

 

Water is the starting point in this theatre; the river of oblivion which cannot yet absorb everything. At this point, Marmarinos seems to be an optimist, inviting in "Reconstruction" his actors – and the audience along with them – to a celebration which I would call a collective memory séance. The first part is built upon improvisations based on the text of „Akropolis". We find ourselves – as the poet wished – to Wawel, kingdom of monuments and shadows. A memory game begins, giving a possibility to come back to life to monumental statues, and real bodies to angels. Marmarinos shows all this with instruments of poor theatre, believing that faith in the metamorphosis is a matter of trust in stage illusion. This is why tradition can clash with modern language and contemporary emotions. And this is why the production from Wrocław is absolutely devoid of pretentious pathos.

 

Miracles happen

 

What I found weaker are the scenes supposed to be a replica of the legendary staging directed by Grotowski. Luckily, Marmarinos and his actors do not try to repeat the gestures and grymaces of the performaers from 13 Rows Theatre. They treat them – agian – as a basis for their own expression, deliberately overdone. Yet, this time it does not lead to any revealing conclusions. Perhaps just to one: time melts theatrical myths as everything else.

 

Yet, it is the final, extended in time, that outshines everything that preceeds it in the piece. The actors invite the spectators to a common dance and it is when we witness a miracle in theatre. Usually, „actions” of this kind annoy me terribly, this time I watched the frenzy of professionals and "civilians" with surprise. And then, we have an apotehosis of theatre through the performaer's nakedness, liberated from any rigour. It sounds funny, but gets you in a mood of euphoria and tranquility. At the same time.»

 

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After the opening of "Akropolis. Reconstruction" at Wrocławski Teatr Współczesny
Krzysztof Kucharski, Polska The Times Gazeta Wrocławska, 14 December 2009

 

The director perfectly made himself understood by the actors: it is a real collective creation, everybody was brilliant...

 

Can you imagine a naked rector of the University of Wrocław, or the one of the Wrocław University of Technology? I can hear the chanting: God forbid!

 

That was the case of the deputy rector of Wrocław theatre school, Professor Krzysztof Kuliński, splashing naked in a stage pool in the proscenium of his home venue, with his fellow-workers. I am not writing this to suggest a visit at Rzeznicza St. to the students of the drama academy: the theatre will not pay me for the advertisement anyway. I am writing this because the issue is much more serious.

 

Last Sunday, I saw an artistic undertaking entitled "Akropolis. Reconstruction" on the aforementioned stage [Wrocławski Teatr Współczesny]. Its animator was inspired by Stanisław Wyspiański and Jerzy Grotowski. For me, however, it is a production full of the character of Wroclaw. It is made with the freshness carried by productions from the whole world that I used to see at the first Wroclaw Festivals of Open Theatre, created by Bogusław Litwiniec.

 

In programme booklets, such undertakings were called and signed as COLLECTIVE CREATIONS. The initiator and creator of the whole project used the intelligence and talent of the whole company he or she worked with. I think this is one of such cases, rare on our stages today.

 

I will not hide that I was surprised that a Greek – not a Pole – was the author of the event. Then I imagined the director Michael Marmarinos as a person a little older than me. Unfortunately, he is much younger, but he thinks in artistic categories of those times. Such productions were a great strengths of students' counterculture. I remember the brilliant "Gargantua" by Centro Universitario Teatrale form Parma (1967), "Peace" based on Aristophanes' works by Theatre Creation from Lausanne (1969), or, not least, the Polish "Falling" after Różewicz, produced at Teatr STU from Krakow by Krzysztof Jasiński (1971). Those are collective creations reminding us of hippie communes. It was through such a prism that I was watching that performance.

 

I will begin with drawbacks. It is only the idea of discussion that has not really worked. Neither did the attempt of involving the audience seated in the middle of the event and haunted by the actors from all sides. It is a sin of unfaith and thus does not work. The discussion concerned issues that are not part of our everyday life.

 

Does anybody think, in their everyday life, what place he or she finds the most important in Poland? How to reconcile it with the pursuit of money? I am interested if the production can move any of those frantic runners: it requires not only attention and sensitivity, but also patience. We are going to spend three hours at the theatre.

 

I was waiting for the references to Grotowski's "Akropolis", that I saw several times forty years ago. It was a great idea to recall its creators with black-and-white slides from the production. The scenes reconstructed by the actors did not impress me so much, confronted with memory. Different tensions, different emotions. It reminded of a kind of museum glass-case. I think positively that was done on purpose, as an attempt to draw attention to history, to show it or touch it.

 

When I left the theatre I thought the whole performance was in constant motion. The director perfectly made himself understood by the actors: it is a real collective creation. Everybody was brilliant. I left the theatre with my head full of various associations and thoughts. I emphasise it as it has not happened to me for a long time. Contemporary theatre is very primitive. Sometimes I have an impression it is made by cynical idiots for other idiots. The point is that idiots are not theatre-goers.

 

Wrocławski Teatr Współczesny "Akropolis. Reconstruction" (Polsh title "Akropolis. Rekonstrukcja"). Directed by Michael Marmarinos, music Piotr Dziubek, set Dominika Skaza, choreography Leszek Bzdyl, excellently performed by: Anna Błaut, Maria Czykwin, Renata Kościelniak, Katarzyna Z. Michalska, Krzysztof Kuliński, Piotr Łukaszczyk, Krzysztof Zych. Opening 11 December 2009.

 

 

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Katarzyna Kamińska, Gazeta Wyborcza Wrocław, 16 December 2009

 

Wroclawski Teatr Wspolczesny opened the season with the production 'Akropolis. Reconstruction'. The Greek director Michael Marmarinos showed an essay on memory, well performed, visually interesting, but unordered and with scarce magnetical moments

 

"Akropolis. Reconstruction" is a stage laboratory, and not a story with a clear beginning, middle and end. Michael Marmarinos investigates the way that memory – his own, actors', audience's memory – deformed the symbols and images that have functioned in culture for years. Characters of Stanisław Wyspiański's drama appear on stage, delivering the text enriched by new lines added by the director and actors. The staging places them in a new context, adding meanings different than in the original.

 

The first and best of the three parts of the production takes place, just like Wyspiański's "Akropolis", in the Wawel cathedral. Statues of angels, Lady of Ankwicz's monument, Maid of Skotnicki's monument, and Clio, return to life and talk, after all the years that have passed since Wyspiański had described them for the first time. But past events look in their memory different than once, it is not sure what exactly happened, and where. There are contemporary references, (one of the angels recalls even Brad Silberling's film "City of Angels"), winking at the spectator, breaking the serious atmosphere of the drama (the characters complain about the discomfort they suffer on plinths). Then Marmarinos changes the play into a discussion, during which the actors ask one another and the audience about the meaning of the word "acropolis" and about the contemporary place of authority and cult in Poland and Europe. Unfortunately, it is difficult to draw any conclusions from that conversation.

 

In the second part, scenes from "Akropolis" Teatr Laboratorium from 1962, on the screens hung above the stage, while the actors of Wspolczesny imitate Jerzy Grotowski's company. The third act returns to the convention known from the first part of the performance.

 

It is not easy – perhaps even impossible – to answer what problems "Akropolis. Reconstruction" actually tackles. We do not learn what is important for today's Pole/European, what shapes the system of their values, how deeply their self-awareness goes. The title reconstruction of today's acropolis does not take place. The play with Grotowski's work remains incomprehensible as well. Marmarinos makes several references to his staging (e.g. introducing a violin player preforming a pre-war chestnut "Ostatnia niedziela" - “The last Sunday”), but that does not constitute any kind of comment or a new interpretation of "Akropolis" by Laboratorium.

 

Marmarinos's directing concept is neither clear nor absorbing. The actors are those who save the production. For a long time, there has not been a production at Teatr Wspolczesny where they would be as brilliant as a team. In "Akropolis. Reconstruction" they become a community, one big organism. They manage to create an interesting tension with played characters; they make an impression of being in half-private on stage. We remember Piotr Lukaszczyk juggling with moods and Maria Czykwin, skilfully changing incarnations; Katarzyna Z. Michalska is brilliant as well. Perhaps, if the whole production had been created with the use of improvisation, we would meet with a new quality in Polish theatre. In its present form, "Akropolis. Reconstruction" is a well performed essay on memory, visually interesting (set made up by a pool, screens and empty space of the stage), but unordered and with scarce magnetical moments.

 

 

 

 

Grotowski for the first time
Joanna Derkaczew, Gazeta Wyborcza, 18 December 2009

 

The interest in the creator of Teatr Laboratorium was limited by a mystical aura surrounding the company. Breaking the “pact of silence” around their work is a success of the finishing Grotowski Year.

 

The Grotowski Year, included into UNESCO patronage, announced on the 10th anniversary of Grotowski's death and 50 years after he took the direction of Theatre of 13 Rows in Opole, issued dozens of events. Conferences, exhibitions, film screenings and meetings with collaborators were held in the places linked with the legendary theatre maker – from Rzeszow to California, from Pontedera to New York. Grotowski Institute from Wroclaw marked its presence everywhere: in Rome, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Moscow. The April festival "World as a Place of Truth" in Wroclaw, became a spectacular event gathering the masters of European theatre – Peter Brook, Eugenio Barba, Pina Bausch – who connected their search with Grotowski's experiments.

 

Yet, although such educational-promotional ideas are never redundadnt, they did not prove to be the most important ones.

 

The problem with the memory of Grotowski could not be reduced to the lack of conference materials, texts written by "experts in", workshops for the initiated. The interest in the creator of Teatr Laboratorium was limited by a mystical aura surrounding the company. For years, the heirs of his work (researchers or practitioners connected with Grotowski centres in Pontedera and Wrocław) behaved like jealous guards protecting their master's work. It is difficult to deny they had their reasons: a superficial, ill-disposed reading of materials about Grotowski resulted in distortions and accusations of charlatanry, sectarianism, manipulation. However, the practice of "keeping the secret" and monopolising "the truth about Grot" turned out to be ineffective and discouraging.

 

Thus, stripping the master of the label “only for the selected” was the big challenge for the anniversary year 2009. First steps towards it were taken. Dariusz Kosiński's book "Grotowski. Przewodnik" ["Grotowski. The guide"], published by the Grotowski Institute, reports in a reserved, fact-focused way the following stages of the artist's work. Kosiński does not judge, nor does he hesitate to question some of the choices made by the "master". For the first time, his book reveals what was only a mysterious legend for younger generations. Hard facts, connections with other creators make Grotowski more than an other-worldly mystic phenomenon.

 

While experts debated in university auditoriums, voices speaking in a new tone appeared in the media. Krystian Lupa, in his April interview to Łukasz Drewniak ("Dziennik") called Grotowski a false prophet, Thomas Richards and Mario Biagini (Grotowski's heirs, running the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in Pontedera, Italy) announced the publishing the directors unedited works.

 

Michael Marmarinos's production "Akropolis. Reconstruction" (after the play created with Jozef Szajna in 1962), staged at Wrocławski Teatr Wspolczesny. would be something unthinkable not so long ago. A conviction about the uniqueness of Grotowski's work was widespread. Yet, the young actors measure themselves with Wyspiański's mythologised drama in a surprisingly light and unpretentious way. Although the memory of Grotowski's play is connected here with meditations about "what is the contemporary Polish Acropolis, a place of collective memory, fundamental for the community", we cannot feel pathos or didactics.

 

Seven actors emerge from a water pool like from the river of oblivion, to live again what could be the experience of Grotowski's company. In the first act, as monuments from the Wawel cathedral waking up to life, they create a study of desire, full of energy and magic. They gravitate to one another, learn to touch, move, recognise emotions and impulses in the bodies. As angels, historical and allegorical characters, they experience the most difficult thing: contact with the other. This energy will be very useful: in the second act, with the background of blurred, obscure stills from Grotowski's play, when they reconstruct the scenes from that legendary production.

 

The goal in not staging "Akropolis" better, in a more contemporary way, outdoing Grotowski. The artists treat the archival material respectfully and gently. Yet, it is undoubtedly their own work, their fresh look, their creative power. Not a copy, not a museum, but a starting point for their own research. If other artists, measuring themselves with the heritage of Grotowski, adopt such tactics too, there is a chance it will not be a “do not touch” exhibit any more.

 

Grzegorz Chojnowski, www.chojnowski.blog.spot.com; 11 December 2009
AKROPOLIS. RECONSTRUCTION (Wrocławski Teatr Współczesny)

 

 

The actor is most important in the reconstruction of „Akropolis” in Wrocław. The performance begins in a pool, from which the actors go to the stage, impersonating the angels. The improvise and search. The most frequent desire is the one of contact with the partner, of a kiss: the one of a union. The historical context, Wyspiański's drama have no meaning, history is replaced by acting exercises, a bit too long, excellently performed. Then, a discussion takes place. At first in the safe surrounding of the pool, then on stage. The spectators, involved into it, give their ideas of contemporary Polish Acropolis, central point, seat of authorities, dwelling of the national spirit. Warsaw, because it is the capital stolica, Wawel, as Wyspiański wanted, Auschwitz, after Grotowski, Częstochowa, somebody mentions Licheń, Jurata, Międzyzdroje, Wrocław. Something different for everyone. Then, we try to apply the method created by the founder of Teatr Laboratorium. Jacob's story is reconstructed documentarily, mechanically, without the emotional involvement of the performers. The actors put heavy shoes on their bare feet, which is an association with the shoes from Grotowski's and Szajna's production; they intonate texts in an identically unnatural way, practicing their technique again, in search of the tone that – we already guess – they are not going to find. How to speak of Acropolis in theatre today, if there are so many discourses not excluding their mutual existence and, at the same time, excluding one another?

 

The scenical result of the experiments from the 60s was treated as a stage, a step towards non-poor theatre, and rejected as such, which was probably a right decision. The myth of that one lives in this one only in a series of slides from the legendary „Akropolis”, apparently counterbalancing the pastiche convention. The slideshow says nothing, because the breathing principle, in theatre, is based on the word, after all... and the theatre speaking of authorities, and willing to express their presence, has now a trouble (it has always had it?). The sense of the biblical parable disappears, we need a new Bible, or at least different forms of creation. The staging of the Troyan part finishes with a similar failure. While it is true that the act goes all the way, including love and undressing, but also in the case of ancient Greeks, what the audience gets from the plot is the love story instead of a summa of relationships of humans and gods. Thus, a dance, ordinary dance with one, well-known sequence, becomes the most joyful moment of the play. You can plunge into it like into the water, without thinking and without remembering. The euphoria is obviously followed by the return to reality.

 

Productions revealing the working technique and confessing a certain helplessness in the contact with the text-legend are frequent in today's theatre, but they rarely result in something you could take home. In spite of the pleasure of watching. The case of „Akropolis. Reconstruction” is different in the sense that the creators' concern is that the actors on stage become an identification of the spectators. They invite us to a dance, to a dialogue, they maintain the eye-contact. We are all the same: humans living in millions of Acropolis, and theatre only articulates that; it does not announce it. Yet, the lack of one centre does not need to be a tragedy. This is also revealed in this interesting production.