OLD POLISH JOYS directed by Jarosław Kilian

Premiere 28 December 2019 Theatre Academy. Collegium Nobilium Theatre

OLD POLISH JOYS based on the script by Kazimierz Deimek, directed by Yaroslav Kilyan. The Collegium Nobilium Theater of the Theater Academy in Warsaw.

Before the premiere, I spoke to Jarosław Kilian, the show's director.

Tomasz Ostrowski: Kazimierz Dejmek was passionate about Old Polish literature from an early age. He claimed: "These aesthetic proposals that the old theatre reveals to us are the only Polish original, national solutions for our stage art, next to the works of three playwrights: Mickiewicz, Wyspiański and Witkiewicz". "The Old Polish Passion plays are the last part after "The Life of Joseph", "The Story of the Glorious Resurrection of Our Lord", "Dialogus de Passione" and "The Game of the Birth and Passion" of Dejmko's Old Polish Passion plays. We know from the preview that you use Kazimierz Dejmek's script in your staging of the Old Polish Passion plays.

Jaroslav Kilian: We tried to take up such a challenge - started even earlier by Leon Schiller and Juliusz Osterwa's Reduta - as the Laboratory and the Studio of Old Polish Drama to reach, like those great predecessors, to texts that really constituted, maybe not Polish drama, but Polish theatre and theatrical thinking. These texts were restored to theatre by Dejmek, and even earlier they were restored by Julian Lewanski through his research, collection of texts and their publication. We take up the laboratory work of the great predecessors. We are looking at the extent to which these old texts carry weight today, the extent to which they sound, the extent to which they tell about us Poles today.

Kazimierz Dejmek found a recipe for Old Polish literature and its popularisation through the introduction of intermedia - croquettes - to serious themes in "Żywocie Józefa" (New Theatre in Łódź 1958, National Theatre 1965) or "History o chwalebnym Zmartwychwstaniu Pańskim" (New Theatre in Łódź 1961, National Theatre 1965). The culmination of these two titles is precisely the 'Old Polish Delights'.

That's right, here I have tried to thread these ribald lyrics, collected from various sources, on a single theme, and this theme is the figure of "Gołej" or "kostucha", i.e. death, which these games are supposed to scare away, and yet it still appears. We look at it as if it were a kind of Polish Decameron, where amidst the coarse jokes, amidst the erotic overtones, amidst the laugh-out-loud banter, there appears the shadow of death, which is inexorably approaching. But a death that is the doer of the divine will, and then these fawning, rubbishy crotchets perhaps take on greater meaning. These jokes in the shadow of death may resemble such an attempt to tame the inevitable.

There are eight texts in the Dejmko script. Two are missing from your staging: 'The Virtue and the Three Grandfathers' and 'The Lord, the Peasant, the Two Girls and the Widower'. Why did you omit these texts?

I have made some adaptations. We want the show to be mobile. So that it can be shown, so that it's in one block. We've rearranged the order and shortened by these two strops. We think that a very important element of the show is the music, developed and performed live by Maria Pomianowska. It not only builds the aura, but is also the vehicle of this staging. The musicians are on stage all the time. They play old instruments: the Biłgoraj suka, the Płock fiddle or the wspak. The wspak is the great-grandmother of the cello. There are also percussion instruments, drums and a whole assortment of flutes, pomortas and wind instruments, which will accompany us not only in the performance of songs and early music, but will form a certain rhythmic tissue of this performance.

For Dejmek, set design was a very important element of staging. The set design and costumes for many of his plays, including Old Polish, were prepared by Andrzej Stopka, who was excellent at transforming folk and traditional elements into contemporary language. When Dejmek prepared 'Uciechy staropolskie' [Old Polish Embellishments] in 1981 at Teatr Polski in Warsaw, Andrzej Stopka was already dead; he still wanted to follow Stopka's scenographic ideas. He invited Stopka's pupil Jan Polewka to collaborate with him. Jan Polewka wrote about this collaboration for the performance programme: "The shape of the stage design is an attempt to continue the Dejmka-Stopka Polish stage, with its Old Polish stagings of 'Historia o chwalebnym Zmartwychwstaniu Pańskim' and 'Żywot Józefa'. Stopka's costumes used in 'Uciechy' come from the intermedia of those productions'. What is it like in this production? What tasks were given to set designer Marek Chowaniec and costume designer Aleksandra Gąsior?

In a way, I inherited a machine for playing Old Polish literature and drama. Marek Chowaniec designed a certain disposition that was used in a previous production, in 'The Life of Joseph'. We have a wooden machine to insert into any space, used to play Old Polish structure.

The theatrical machine used in the performance, hidden in the scenery, allows multiple prospects (backdrops) to be manually lowered and replaced. The design of the machine refers to historical technical solutions of the Baroque theatre.

This theatrical machine is part of the idea of the Old Polish Workshop, which is realising a series of Old Polish dramas. The initiator of this idea, Jarosław Gajewski, invited Marek Chowaniec, who built a dispositive, a kind of theatrical machine in which Old Polish drama can be performed. For this dispositive, new prospects have been made for the 'Old Polish Escapes', which are based on Old Polish woodcuts from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. They are monochromatic and are embedded in the stylistic sequence of the show's set and costumes. Above everything appears and dominates a large clock, which measures minutes, hours but also months, years and seasons. Our story is inscribed in this rhythm of time. For the essence of what we are trying to tell is a reference to a metaphysical figure, the figure of death, which is entwined in every human fate and which mercilessly measures minutes, hours and the passage of time.

And don't these turning clock wheels symbolise the passing of time through the centuries, when the texts remain constantly relevant?

And that is a very beautiful metaphor. I am happy to keep it up, I will keep repeating it. This is also the subject of our laboratory research. How much in these past themes, and we believe there is, how much is the story of us today. And certainly there is a theatrical potential that we are trying to detect and recreate. Our whole idea of the Laboratory and the Studio of Old Polish Drama is that it is a meeting of teachers, professors of the Theatre Academy and professors of the Academy of Fine Arts - both Marek Chowaniec and Ola Gąsior are lecturers at the Academy of Fine Arts - with the youngest lecturers, graduates and students. Here, professors from the Theatre Academy, actors from the National Theatre and students play. This is the point of the laboratory work and of inviting the teachers and students of these two universities to work together.

Listening to the text ringing out from the stage, one comes to the conclusion that nothing actually needs or should be modernised.

I think that, as in every text that once functioned and existed, as in Shakespeare, as in Greek dramas, as in Chekhov, as in Old Polish drama, there are stories that have been told for generations and that tell a great story about us. We are not discovering America, Leon Schiller did the same by re-inventing Polish texts, and Kazimierz Dejmek did the same by telling a contemporary story using old texts.

Thank you for talking to me.

Thank you.

 

OLD POLISH JOYS
Creators:
the script: Kazimierz Dejmek
directing: Jarosław Kilian
musical development: Maria Pomianowska
set design: Marek Chowaniec
costumes: Aleksandra Gąsior
characterization: Katarzyna Szkop
choreography: Katarzyna Anna Małachowska
language consultations: Jerzy Łazewski
vocal training – Aldona Krasucka

Performing:
Jarosław Gajewski (actor of the National Theatre)
Krzysztof Godlewski
Joanna Halinowska
Lidia Pronobis
Natalia Stachyra
Maciej Wierzbicki
Maciej Zuchowicz
live music performed by:
Marii Pomianowskiej (knee fidels)
Karoliny Hulbój (wspak)
Wojciech Lubertowicz (drums, duduk, ney)
Agnieszki Szwajgier (flutes)

Production:
Beata Rusinowska
Maja Margasińska
Adriana Pietrukaniec

Organizers: Fundacja Uwaga na Kulturę!, Dzielnicowy Ośrodek Kultury Ursynów, Akademia Teatralna im. Aleksandra Zelwerowicza oraz Teatr Collegium Nobilium