“Melodrama” at Powszechyny Theatre.
Members of Theater Mitu, our Brooklyn-based firm, traveled to Warsaw in early September, a full day earlier than the Technology After Pageant was set to start. Upon touchdown, we noticed a metropolis of 1.7 million folks basking in a superb solar—and we had been fantastically jetlagged. The readability and sparkle of the sunshine was filtered by way of the luxurious greenery and vibrant vitality of up to date Warsaw.
We went for an extended stroll after checking into the lodge, which helped with the jetlag and amplified our sense of pleasure. This was our first analysis journey for the reason that pandemic. For many years, Mitu has been dedicated to increasing the definition of theatre, whereas in search of new improvements in arts apply. We do that by way of analysis journeys, assembly artists and fascinating with their work.
Our first cease on this journey: Pinball Station, an interactive museum devoted to the time-honored recreation, tucked away in an outdated prepare station behind a tall house advanced. It’s stocked with greater than 100 distinctive pinball machines and arcade video games courting again to 1932, although most machines are from the ’80s and ’90s, in order that profitable photographs would possibly set off a Kiss tune, and add-a-ball would possibly ship a Metallica riff zinging throughout the previous prepare terminal.
It was an ideal place to push back sleep and prime us for the competition to come back. Very similar to a pinball recreation, the Technology After Pageant would show to be a journey to the very fringe of how we’d survive earlier than the ball goes down the drain. However quite than forecast the game-ending tragedy of a misplaced ball, the competition would offer a glimpse into a rustic very a lot retaining the ball in play by valuing theatre as an area of dialogue and alternate, and recognizing its transformational energy.
Our mission on the bottom in Warsaw was to attend the Technology After Pageant as members of the LINKAGES: Poland delegation, a boundary-expanding challenge of Philip Arnoult’s Middle for Worldwide Theatre Improvement (CITD). Our hosts, Howard Shalwitz and Brandice Thompson, had invited us to doc the journey, whereas accompanying their group of artists from the U.S. As contributors in LINKAGES: Poland, the U.S. group was paired with up to date Polish theatre artists. This cohort had spent the higher a part of two years in conferences over Zoom, and this is able to be the primary time they’d meet in particular person. The LINKAGES group from the U.S. included Abigail Browde + Michael Silverstone of 600 Highwaymen; director, performer, and translator Aya Ogawa; Ben Raanan, inventive director of Phamaly Theater; playwright, lyricist, and librettist Melisa Tien; Katie Yohe, inventive director of A.B.L.E. Ensemble; Ben Pesner, from the Venturous Theatre Fund; and Blair Ruble, a trustee of Belief For Mutual Understanding.
We occurred to enter Poland on the cusp of a nationwide election, which might see the conservative Regulation and Justice get together lose its majority in parliament after an eight-year rule. The theme of the Technology After Pageant, organized by Nowy Teatr, was “Actuality Test: have we grow to be so accustomed to our actuality, we overlook we will query it?” In 14 productions throughout 4 days, our pinball trip by way of Technology After would confront us with questions central to Poland’s relationship with abortion rights, queer identities, male feelings, and what household life is like residing with a incapacity.
Day one started with a efficiency of JaWa by Janek Turkowski and Iwona Nowacka at Komuna Warszawa. Half artwork set up, half theatre piece, and half documentary efficiency lecture, the present disguised its advanced dramaturgy as a easy slide present, outlining a year-long challenge involving the engagement of homeless males within the reconstruction and repurposing of out of doors areas. However it proved to be a shifting and intimate have a look at the social energy of blending artwork with the fact of habit.
From there we walked to the Nationwide Museum of Warsaw to soak up Ramona Nagabczyńska’s Bliss, a physicalized dialog between Witkacy’s “Treatise on Being in and for itself,” which considers corporeal actuality, and Nagabczyńska’s personal expertise giving start. A shocking motion piece of immediacy and humor carried out on the steps of the museum’s lobby, the work depicted the enjoyment of start and blended historic myths with up to date horror movies.
From there we had been shot over to the Nowy Teatr for a manufacturing of The Metamorphosis by Grzegorz Jaremko, from Kafka’s novel, with textual content and dramaturgy by Mateusz Górniak. It retold the story of Gregor Samsa by way of the lens of a post-apocalyptic society, utilizing reside cinema to observe his transformation into the ”horrible vermin” all of us should grow to be to outlive late-stage capitalism.
The Nowy Teatr’s bodily house impressed us at first sight: half café, half bookstore, and half absolutely modernized theatre advanced, the constructing itself is an area of gathering and neighborhood round meals, books, artwork, and concepts. It reminded us of our residence in Brooklyn, MITU580, the place Theater Mitu gathers to make our work, and helped us dream of future areas which can be without delay expansive and intimate, the place our neighborhood would possibly collect over espresso to debate artwork and concepts.
For day two, we headed again to Nowy Teatr within the morning for Michał Zadara’s Institute for Performative Regulation lecture titled, “Who poisoned the Oder River?” It adopted an investigation into native and nationwide corruption launched by Zadara and his group after air pollution killed hundreds of thousands of fish in a distant space of the title river. Subsequent was Anna Karpenko’s lecture “In a Void: Performative Arts in Belarus,” which spoke to the historical past, bravery, and resistance of performative artists who proceed to endure an “infinite period of oppression” within the nation.
A heady stroll from the Nowy Teatr foyer dropped us in a close-by neighborhood basketball courtroom for a efficiency of John Cage’s 122 Phrases on Music and Dance by Marta Ziółek and company. An train in paying “consideration to what it’s, simply as it’s,” this piece concerned six dancers, a drummer, and a saxophonist (with some severe round respiratory abilities), all bodily articulating and responding to Cage’s textual content. The impact was an “artwork within the on a regular basis” expertise, turning the viewers, the passing pedestrians, and Warsaw site visitors into dance companions.
From right here, we shot up north to the Dramatyczny Theatre in central Warsaw for a efficiency of Michał Buszewicz’s Boys Cry. Tackling the feelings of males in a communal context, the piece depicts the toxicity of male emotional repression in trendy society by way of compelling first-person testimony.
A short tram trip throughout the Vistula River to the Praga neighborhood and the Powszechny Theatre can be our final cease of the day, to see Melodrama by Anna Smolar. An epic entanglement of the addicted and the co-dependent, Smolar’s reside cinema feed disrupted our view of violence, betrayal, anger, and melancholy to disclose new insights into the “savior function” and what we should do to free ourselves from poisonous relationships. In a post-show dialog, Smolar associated that she likes “to make use of video as a software to point out how we manipulate the photographs. In Melodrama, we use it to get nearer to the emotion and to construct intimacy, and to point out issues that get misplaced on the larger stage.”
Her detailed deconstruction of intimate relationships was an add-a-ball shot that gave us the vitality for the following day’s program. Day three’s pinball drop started on the Museum of Fashionable Artwork for a day filled with a variety of unique work. First up was the gallery exhibition and reside efficiency of Kissing Doesn’t Kill: Ania Nowak and Visitors. This exhibit centered queer grief over the lack of rights, well being, and family members, by way of video, images, sound artwork, portray, sculpture, and a efficiency motion by Nowak. Visitors had been invited to wander the gallery. Nowak then appeared within the doorway and proceeded to allure, seduce, and encourage the viewers to observe her as she engaged with the artworks on show. Directly humorous, joyful, and shifting, her efficiency and the exhibit honored the Gran Fury collective, a U.S. activist group that used the ability of artwork to convey consideration to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in New York Metropolis within the ’80s and ’90s.
From right here we returned to the Nowy Theatr for Gosia Wdowik’s She Was a Good friend of Somebody Else. This technology-forward piece used AI photograph manipulation, video design, and an ingenious fog impact to depict the restricted entry girls should reproductive well being. Woven with private narrative, profiles of girls who got here ahead to publicly acknowledge their abortions, and a unprecedented bodily efficiency from a silent and limp Wdowik, She Was a Good friend gave voice to the communal outrage of Poland’s latest ban on abortion.
After a swift tram trip as much as TR Warszawa, we arrived for his or her co-production with Theatre 21 of Household by Justyna Sobczyk. Structured like a TV sitcom and primarily based on improvisations with Theatre 21’s firm of actors with Down Syndrome and TR Warsawa’s firm of non-disabled actors, the present had actors shift roles, every taking a flip enjoying mother-father-sister-brother-boyfriend-or-neighbor to poignant impact.
The ultimate present of the night was The Staff by Łukasz Twarkowski at the STUDIO Teatrgaleria. This AI origin story was a technological feat of reside cinema and visible subterfuge. The viewers moved freely round a four-sided clear dice with big video screens projecting the reside cinema feeds of the motion contained in the field on each facet. The manufacturing’s mastery of know-how appealed to Mitu’s visible and performative aesthetic, whereas its use of reside cinema as each a mirror and a portal by way of which to view opposing views of what our future could be past Earth made for an impactful spectacle.
Day 4: We rose early to board a bus for a day journey to Krakow to view The Artwork of Residing by Katarzyna Kalwat on the Narodowy Stary Teatr. An epic day and an all-too-brief go to to certainly one of Poland’s most beloved and delightful cities, The Artwork of Residing was a five-hour try to distill George Perec’s epic novel Life as a consumer’s guide right into a theatre occasion. It introduced with it the uncomfortable knock of actuality—a reaffirmation that life is each nomadic and solitary, whereas reminding us how important connection, neighborhood, and co-existence are in our present second.
On the late bus trip residence, because the countryside unfolded into the darkness, we had been lastly capable of start processing the a number of realities we had witnessed over the past 4 days. Pinballing from one self-discipline to a different, the competition twisted and turned us round, linking related themes and viewpoints whereas inviting us to commune with theatregoers of all ages. At every efficiency, we witnessed teams of keen younger folks collaborating in certainly one of Poland’s biggest belongings: a theatre the place points and subjects are tackled with immediacy, innovation, and an actual sense that a number of realities can exist round us unexpectedly.
There was a memorable second within the foyer of the the STUDIO Teatrgaleria when the LINKAGES: Poland cohort gathered with their Polish counterparts for brunch. It was as if the way forward for theatremaking within the U.S. was colliding with the way forward for Polish theatre in a single room. The joy and vitality of this room was one jackpot we racked up from this competition’s pinball recreation. And it was a testomony to the work of LINKAGES: Poland and the Middle for Worldwide Theatre Improvement.
It has been two months since Mitu members returned to Brooklyn, however the Technology After Pageant remains to be with us. In our fridge at MITU580, we now inventory tonic water and lemon to provide a continuing stream of tonic espressos—the drink that fueled us by way of the competition. And Mitu has been busy growing a brand new challenge and supporting our Van Lier Fellows as they take part in our efficiency and know-how fellowship, the Hybrid Arts Lab. We returned from Poland particularly excited by the vary of engagements with know-how we witnessed, significantly reside cinema and its affect on narrative, emotion, how people gaze, and the way this all shapes our each day sociopolitical interactions.
Above all, we left Warsaw hopeful that the colourful conversations this artwork type can produce is alive and effectively. As Mitu opened the doorways of MITU580 to share our Hybrid Arts Lab fellows and samples of their work this November, we witnessed a full home of younger people keen to leap right into a dialog about progressive artmaking, the ability of small arts areas, and the sources these areas can present to early-career and rising artists. To see these future makers and viewers members refill MITU580 this fall reminded us of Warsaw, and of that jackpot gathering of artists within the STUDIO Teatrgaleria.
It’s clear that there can be generational change within the theatre. The subsequent cohort of makers is already enjoying that pinball recreation, all around the world, and there’s a curious neighborhood hungry for the add-a-ball additional life music to play.
Denis Butkus (he/him) and Justin Nestor (he/him) are firm members of Theater Mitu. Collectively they work with founding inventive director Rubén Polendo and an interdisciplinary group of firm members to broaden the definition of theatre by way of methodical experimentation with the shape.
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