THE ART OF INTONATION  Tadeusz Słobodzianek

director Anna Wieczur

Premiere 8 January 2022 Teatr Dramayczny in Warsaw

Word and actor versus the art of intonation.
Following the premiere of Tadeusz Słobodzianek's Sztuka intonacji directed by Anna Wieczur, I talk to Slawomir Grzymkowski, who plays the role of Ludwik Flaszen. 

Tomasz Ostrowski: The latest premiere of the Dramatyczny Theatre in Warsaw is "Art of intonation" based on the excellent texts by Tadeusz Słobodzianek: "Art of intonation" and "Return of Orpheus" from the collection of dramas "Kwartety otwockie". The construction of the performance is based on minimalist scenery and props necessary for the stage action. The actors performing in individual scenes are visible, whether they are taking part in the stage action or are backstage exposed to the audience.

Slawomir Grzymkowski: This world was invented by Ania Wieczur. It was her concept. We wondered if there should be more props in there, be packaged, more theatrical. At some point there was the idea that it could follow constructivist theatre. That is, to have doors in there.
Ania decided not to. She decided that the main vehicle for this theatre would be the actor. That for us was the most comforting thing. It was also clear that we were suggesting that we were in theatre all the time. It is the author's energy, words and intonation that creates the theatre, not the wardrobe, the horizon, the backstage.
We have tried to reduce everything that is unnecessary for us. So that it's like the words that come off the stage. I feel that there is no superfluous word there. And it's also consistently included in the costume and characterisation. A tremendous job was done by our theatre make-up artists. This is what Maja Komorowska emphasised after the premiere. She was absolutely seduced by the work of the make-up artists. I myself, after Joanna Tomaszycka finished the make-up, when I saw my beard and hair, I got another argument.

Additional tool.

That's right, it's an extra tool. It's the moment I like best in theatre, when more elements come into the show. And suddenly it starts to come alive. Props appear, costume, sound, lighting, characterisation. And suddenly it all starts to play together. There are times when it doesn't. In this case it was going yes. When I saw what I looked like when I came out of the make-up room, I thought: I already have all the acting arguments in hand. It helped me tremendously. In a way, it also strengthened me in the expressiveness of my acting.

The costumes and make-up are intended to make the characters of the dramas plausible to the photographic documentation contained in the theatre archives.

We were also concerned not to create any caricatures. This was a fundamental task. But what is an excellent achievement of all this work is the shared sense of humour. We were entertained by the text, and the sense of humour, which is our own private humour, worked very well for this performance. We didn't set out to do a comedy show. We approached the subject matter with complete seriousness. Everything was created thanks to the positive atmosphere, which is a huge credit to Anna Wieczur. I think you can feel that we like it, that we want to, that we listen to each other, that it's an ensemble. And that it is not individual solos, but it is playing together.

In the performance you create the figure of Ludwik Flaszen. Since he is not a well-known person like Jerzy Grotowski, it is worth bringing him closer to the audience. Ludwik Flaszen, despite his enormous contribution to Grotowski's work and successes, has always remained in his shadow. Flaszen created the language for Grotowski's subsequent radical experiments, and yet he was often ignored, outwardly remaining anonymous.

Flaszen gave Grotowski his literary foundations. He wrote excellent programmes for performances. These constituted a kind of artistic manifesto for the two artists. Flaszen supported Grotowski from the literary side, and with his knowledge and erudition gave him a foundation for strictly theatrical activities. Anyway, this is also an interesting issue, because Flaszen was relegated to the background. He was always the latter. However, he was the one who coined the term "poor theatre", around which the activities of the Theatre of 13 Rows and later the Laboratory Theatre revolved. I think his role was very important. Just as in contemporary performance we see the artist's actions in space, the other important thing is the programme we can read for these actions. It is no less important than the actions themselves. So they complemented each other here, and maybe even Flaszen gave more theoretical arguments for this activity than Grotowski himself did for practical activities.

Flaszen helped Grotowski revolutionise theatre.

They undoubtedly acted together. It was Flaszen who invited Grotowski to work with him, not the other way around. He was an advocate of his experiments and continued to be so until the very end of his activity. In the first years of the Theatre of 13 Rows, Flaszen caused theatre critics to be very positively disposed towards them. We know of four major critics, students of Professor Wyka: Flaszen, Jan Błoński, Konstanty Puzyna, Andrzej Kijowski. And in those days it was criticism that formed opinions. It seems to me that without those positive, and at the beginning even enthusiastic, articles on Grotowski and his activities, he might not have existed here at all. And this is undoubtedly due to Flaszen, who was a friend of the Kraków criticism community. Not everyone had the chance to see these performances because, of course, Grotowski brilliantly manipulated the whole situation. He caused only a few people to see his performances Well, if eminent critics wrote paeans in professional theatre magazines, this shaped opinions about Grotowski's activity.

Throughout the play, and especially in acts II and III, Tadeusz Słobodzianek exposes how common the phenomenon of artists building myths about themselves is.

Yes, it exposes them. It shows them as they were. As far as Grotowski is concerned, the first act (Moscow 1956) is just discovering this path. He is a student. He knows that the institutional theatre at the time was based on Stanislavsky and on the ideas of Meyerhold and Vakhtangov. Grotowski knew that he did not fit into these categories. It is also mentioned that he has no talent as an actor and is unlikely to have any as a director either. He is at the stage of inventing himself. There is a lot of questioning about Vakhtangov, about how is it that he was working with amateurs who may have been out of college but not working in the theatre? How is it that his plays have become legendary and have become such a myth? This is what he wants to find out. He feels he has to find his own way.

Don't you get the impression that his trip to Moscow to study directing was motivated primarily by his serious illness and the need to seek political patronage for a Soviet specialist treatment facility in the Kara-Kum desert?

You could probably say that. What was more important to him: his studies or seeking protection in connection with his studies? In the course of the play, we learn how he arranged his treatment, how he knew how to take advantage of all the opportunities that came his way in order to gain something from it, to benefit from it while in Moscow. After all, we know how he got into the theatre school in Krakow. He simply presented a party letter of recommendation, which actually ordered him to be accepted as a student.

And then, with the right papers, he went to Moscow.

He went to Moscow, and there, of course, he immediately realised how he could use it. But you can't hold a grudge against him for that, because he nevertheless fought for his health, even for his life. He seized the opportunity of a lifetime. You could say he was very resourceful. And on this occasion he invented himself. He talks to the Master, the actor Yuri Zawadski (played by Adam Ferency in our performance), about where Stanislavsky drew his inspiration from, where Meyerhold or Vakhtangov drew his inspiration from. It all boiled down to the East. But that far east of India, to yoga, to meditation, to physical exercise. He realised that he could benefit a lot there. He could draw from eastern theatre. It was also Japanese theatre and Chinese opera or Indian catachari. He saw what effects it had. But he also saw that in Polish theatre, there wasn't really such a trend. Those were the times when there was a huge fascination with the East. It appeared in Europe and in the United States. After all, many such phenomena were opening up for culture in the 1960s. Starting from music to film. Artists were going to India to meditate and learn these techniques. They would come back and create. Grotowski perfectly shot into these fascinations. He brought them from the Soviet Union and later used them very skilfully.

The character of Yuri Zawadski - the Master, whom Grotowski meets in 1956 and 1976, is superbly created by Adam Ferency. Tadeusz Słobodzianek placed multidimensional meetings with the Master in Acts I and III. In his stories, the Master draws Grotowski into the backstage of the Soviet theatre, not omitting its dark pages.

Grotowski's encounters with the Master are the axis of the performance. They are not only a pretext for historical or political features, but are the starting point for Grotowski's artistic search. The Master gives direction to this search. In the third part, we see a bitter summary of the artist's biography, and on the other side, that of Grotowski, the high point of his career.

The role of the Master is infernally difficult, and Adam Ferency plays it masterfully. Because he is the Master, my professor from PWST in Warsaw. He has mastered the art of intonation to perfection. Watching Adam and Lukasz on stage is extremely inspiring.

Going back to the construction of the play, what is the art of intonation for you in Act II, an act whose text is taken from the drama 'The Return of Orpheus'?

This is such a fascinating story about artists. About the hardship and in some ways the demythologising of these characters. They had their ambitions, and their 'self' was the most important thing. This is what we have in the case of both Kantor and Grotowski.

It is a true story about people who, with the experience of war, were entering new times and trying to find their place, language and expression to say what was in their souls.
Flaszen was actually the official in all this. If Kantor had agreed to come to Opole, I wonder what would have happened. Flaszen was at such a point in his life at the time that, first of all, he was absolutely disillusioned with the system. This political aspect is very important. His book could not be published, it was blocked. And he had ambitions to create. His literary-critical path had been exhausted in Krakow. Consequently, he wanted to open a new chapter. His acquaintance with Grotowski was very superficial. It is a kind of mystery why he invested in Grotowski, why he trusted him. He knew him the least of all the candidates he interviewed.

Many years after the break-up, Flaszen, embittered at being hidden in the shadows in his works, called Grotowski a master manipulator.

That's what it was about. I think his ambitions as an artist were not fulfilled. He also wanted to be a well-known person in some way. He was a co-founder of the Theatre of 13 Rows, but here Grotowski was the undisputed number one. In his book "Grotowski & Company. Sources and Variations." published in 2014 in Polish, his texts from his activities within the Laboratory Theatre, those of his early works and those of his later works, were published. You can find there, of course, notes of regret, the longing to be someone that lies within us all. What unites them is undoubtedly a love of theatre. The awareness that it is a space in which they are perfectly fulfilled. They started from scratch. They didn't want to imitate anything or anyone. They wanted to create their own language and they followed that.

Anna Wieczur emphasised before the premiere that the magical moment of the actor's intimate transformation is of great importance to her in this production. When, after waiting in the darkness, in the vicinity of the playing field, the actor is supposed to cross the threshold of the stage platform and step into the light.

We don't have a material backstage, we have a kind of chessboard on which these chess games, approaches, strategies are played out. Getting to the very edge of the stage is actually private, and only the transformation, including the entry into physicality, is at the moment of the first step onto this platform, and from then on we are no longer private. Then again, we're not exactly private backstage either. This is quite a difficult issue. Because one is already in this character by being present in costume and make-up, but we are not actively participating in the play itself. We actively participate in the listening, or the energy. And stepping into the light of the stage turns on the physicality, because there is gesture, movement and word.

This performance is a concert of acting written out for the voices, melody of words, gestures or movement of the entire acting ensemble. The conductor is Anna Wieczur.

Anna Wieczur defined the nature of this performance. The actors and the text were one area. She watched over our energy, its management in long scenes. She made sure that the dialogue was lively all the time, that we were not seduced by words, that it was not so much a chat but a constantly lively discussion. She watched over all the details of the performance. Also over the music, over when and how this music should appear. Does it come from outside or is it from inside. She composed all the elements together.

The reaction of the audience focused and reacting to every word of this long performance, lasting about three and a half hours, is a success for the whole company. It shows what a longing there is for authorial theatre and acting at the same time.

This is an observation from the viewer's point of view. There was a certain apprehension in us, but the actors, the director Ania, Marta Śniosek-Masacz, who did the set and costumes, the composer Ignacy Zalewski, the light director Paulina Góral and the choreographer Anna Iberszer, we were all fascinated by this text, seduced by it. We were convinced that we had been given really very good material to create a performance. And despite the fact that we were playing on a small stage, Anna the director, urged us to play in such a 'theatrical' way, with full emotions, with full gesture, with full physicality.

Excellent diction.

That's what she made sure of. She took great care to make it audible, to make it understandable. Everything in the play is based on dialogue.

A spectator with no interest in theatre history may find it difficult to discern the great artists of Russian theatre cited in Act I.

This was also the theme of our exploration in this production. Even though these are historical figures, we wanted to show them as people interesting enough for the audience, even if they don't know the theatrical context, their private lives, who they are, to make it interesting for the audience. After all, when we work, we meet such crazy people, sometimes dangerous, sometimes fascinating, and maybe this story will also work on that level.

"The Otwock Quartets" are not only "The Art of Intonation" and "The Return of Orpheus", but also dramas: "Genius", "Burning Bush", "Helsinki", dedicated to other prominent theatre makers: including Kazimierz Dejmek and Konrad Swinarski. Would you like to play in the next episode of 'The Art of Intonation'?

Yes. Because working on this text rekindled my hope that theatre based on acting and text rather than effects was possible again. We worked brilliantly together, but I think the team that formed and the relationships that were there throughout the work made me rediscover theatre. I started to be fascinated by theatre again. During the first period of Pandemic, I had a kind of crisis about theatre. Does theatre still speak to people? Is theatre in any way effective?
I already have this experience with the previous premiere of Tadeusz Slobodzianka's text " The fatalist. Singer's Fairy Tales in Act V". I think this show is also fantastic. And in him, the actor is also the essence of everything. Actor and text. So, if there is an opportunity, I would be happy to accept such an offer.

It is to be wished to the actors of the show that the reaction of the audience provokes them to the greatest activity.

Yes, because if we feel that the audience is involved in the reception, not closed off, not isolated, then it hits. That's how theatre differs from other arts. Here we have direct contact with the audience and the most fascinating thing is the action-reaction. In Pandemic we missed the audience the most when the theatre moved to remote broadcasting, when we recorded to camera, we spoke to camera. That's not theatre. Theatre is the actor and the audience. There is no other justification for this contact. Theatre is only created if the actor has direct contact with the audience and the audience with the actor. If energy flows in both directions, when we breathe together. It is difficult to even describe what this relationship is about, but it is simply fascinating.

Let us return to the value of the word written on the pages of these dramas: "The Art of Intonation" and "The Return of Orpheus". It is evident that the author has preceded his writing with in-depth research, providing a perspective for further discussions on the global phenomenon of Jerzy Grotowski. The literary construction of the works, which Tadeusz Słobodzianek has given to his actors, is an excellent tool when working on the text.

Słobodzianek has created a very precise record. We here had no problem with searching for intentions. You can see that he writes these texts for the theatre, that they are theatrical texts. Because there is a whole group of playwrights who do not work in theatre. Actually, their work ends after the text has been written and they have to modify it during rehearsals. And here we were given a finished text, which actually didn't need to be corrected. It was so clearly formulated and constructed that I compare it to a colouring book, where there are lines or dots which need to be connected, but they are visible. And now whether we use such a colour and saturate the picture in one way or another, or tone it down more, is up to us. In our case, this framework has been outlined. And that's fantastic, because the work was focused solely on those colours, on the dynamics, on choosing the right shade, rather than looking for meaning and wondering why is this character behaving like this? And why did he say that? And what are the implications of that? Here it was all already in the text.

The first fiddle in the performance is played by Łukasz Lewandowski as Jerzy Grotowski. Throughout the performance, the actor practically never leaves the viewer's field of observation. When he is not on the platform defining the playing field, he is present in the backstage area exposed to the viewer.

Of course, here one cannot overlook the gigantic amount of work Lukasz Lewandowski put into finding Grotowski and the energy of this character. The gestures, the transformation. He only has a few minutes between sequences to do this. I think this is an outstanding role and an example of what constructing a role is all about. How many things he had to pay attention to. What titanic work he had to do to prepare for this role.

A superbly crafted gesture.

Yes, people who knew Grotowski know what this is about.

This very readable gesture was well received by the audience.

Because they have in all these elements given who Grotowski was, what we are referring to. For a spectator who comes to see a performance and is not connected to the theatre, perhaps this will not matter so much. But this does not absolve us from the obligation to find the real Grotowski, Flaszen or Kantor in these characters. Here it is important to emphasise how much work Modest Ruciński has put in to make him instantly recognisable.

For example, the excellent scene with the destroyed umbrella. A similar umbrella at Cricoteka in Krakow is one of Tadeusz Kantor's trademarks.

But also those gestures, those long hands. These are also our flavours that we fill the characters with, we complement them with that, and for us it has value because we know how precise it is. We hope that this will also translate into the viewer's perception. He will see that these are not empty gestures, that this is not pretending. Does it hit, does it build the images we want to suggest? Does the viewer follow it? We can be fascinated by both the text and this work, but we do it for the viewer. We don't do it for ourselves. The more detail, the more accuracy, the more satisfying it is for us. And if the viewer doesn't understand something, it means that we have made a mistake somewhere, that there is a disturbance somewhere in this message being sent.

The next performances of The Art of Intonation are on 29 and 30 January and 19 and 20 February on the Small Stage of the Drama Theatre. Thank you for the interview.

Thank you and welcome to the event.

 

Tadeusz Słobodzianek ART OF INTONATION
directing Anna Wieczur
sets and costumes Marta Śniosek-Masacz
music Ignatiy Zalevsky
light Paulina Góral
stage movement Anna Iberszer
Viennese waltz dance consultation Robert Kochanek
waltz francois dance consultation Liwia Bargiel
illusionist consultation Wojciech Rotowski
characterization Joanna Tomaszycka, Marta Krasowska, Violetta Ozga

CAST:
Adam Ferency Champion
Łukasz Lewandowski Student / Jerzyk
Modest Ruciński Tadeusz
Sławomir Grzymkowski Ludovic
Anna Moskal Assistant
Barbara Gorstka (guest star) nurse / waitress

Photo at the top: Sławomir Grzymkowski as Ludovic Flachin
Photos below from the media rehearsal (excerpts from Act I - Mokwa 1956):
In the photos:
Tadeusz Słobodzianek – author
Anna Wieczur - director of the play
Anna Moskal Assistant, Adam Ferency - Champion, Łukasz Lewandowski Student