"TROLLE" directed by Justyna Sobczyk. Theatre 21's performance

Premiere 26 September 2019. primary school no. 373 in Warsaw

Before the premiere, I spoke to Justyna Sobczyk, the director of the show, and Agnieszka Kryst, a dancer, performer and choreographer who prepared the movement for the performance.

DROP THE CONTROLS, TAME YOUR TROLLS

Tomasz Ostrowski: During a short rehearsal we saw the opening scene. The actors of the play are performing in troll masks, will these masks be removed in the play. The masks provide a certain barrier to interacting with the audience.

Justyna Sobczyk: We had one such rehearsal, a wonderful one, by the way. It was very difficult, because on that day there were interviews and school councils in the school. We did not have a hall available. We went to the pitch. The trolls walked around the pitch. For us, it was such trolling. That is, putting your presence into a certain system that is very structured. At one point a group of 5th grade boys showed up with a ball. They wanted to play a match, but we were already there. It got to the point where they asked us if we would play together. The trolls lost 6 : 0, and the boys smashed us. In the meantime it got hot, the masks were taken off. We all noticed that there was a moment of looking around and discovering that this was such a group of people with disabilities, but we very quickly mixed up the teams. Of course, we adults were there and you could see that there was no need to name anything. They mixed. That match had a completely different energy even then.

And then we knew that there was something in this match that took place here on the pitch that we would want to find in our performance. That is, to bring about a similar situation in the performance. That's what music is supposed to help us do. Because we use music and movement in the play, which we end with such a concert together. When the children perform together with our actors, then all the furs that are in different places end up on the carpet at the back of the room, because in classes I-III we use such an arrangement of space, which is designed for sitting and talking. That's where we meet them. There, as part of this concert, there is a pulling down of masks and a moment of being together. The whole drama is based on this, that in the first image we see the distance between the audience and the actors. In the following images, we work out how to get us to sit together in the last scene. Along the way, we have various small incidents contained in several small scenes.

An important element of the show is the music and here we have used some of our inspiration from Norwegian music. When the children get the message 'you are entering the classroom' the door opens and suddenly there is music, which sort of enlarges that space that opens up. That's what we want to bring in as well. I'm a big believer in that, that it's the encounter with this stranger, with this other, that really opens us up. We don't use trolling in the performance, because teachers might get scared. The opening can happen by pulling the benches apart for a moment. We don't randomly put a piece of cloth on the teacher's desk or put a flower in front of them. We observe what happens after these simple gestures. The teacher suddenly smiles. The children, who are sitting at this material in one desk, suddenly look at it and work with it, stroke it and this introduces a certain gentleness. We have done workshops before and we have tested certain situations with the children. We actually look for such smaller points in the relationship with the person. They are actually taken from such inspirations and experiences of how you work with autistic people who are afraid of touch and contact. Before there is contact, can different material textures be used to build up this path?

I like the fact that this reciprocal meeting of children with Theatre 21 actors does not take place in a large gymnasium but in a small intimate classroom providing close contact.

J.S. Yes it was very important to us

Is this your first contact with Theater 21?

Agnieszka Kryst: This is the first time I have worked with Theatre 21. Justyna and I had already known each other much earlier. I have seen her performances but I have not yet participated in the creative process of this theatre. It is very interesting for me to come into contact with this kind of performers. I think there is more naturalness and sincerity in the giving. I speak here as a person who also performs. There's not so much conceptualising, thinking, building, you just go straight in that direction: this is what we have, this is what we give, this is how we act. That's the first thing that comes to mind. We, as dancers, performers, are accustomed to a lot of things and we're constantly looking for things, and here it's right away.

J.S. Actors and dancers get a lot of inspiration, they watch each other, they watch other shows, it's different here. TROLLS features half of our ensemble who are not playing in the play The Revolution That Wasn't There, which means they were not the chosen actors who are the best in movement. I was very keen for the whole ensemble to work. And this is done without any translation. That's what I have and that's what I can bring.

A. K. The word trolls needs to be redefined with this performance. The first connotation is that they are mischievous little gnomes and in fact we change their meaning. A troll does not have to mean something bad, which we are used to through familiar fairy tale stories. We are just here to break these meanings. This otherness sometimes we have to like and accept. We learn to walk backwards, but if we fail, this failure can become a success. Maybe we find a different kind of way, or a lot of tasks that were given differently were understood differently by our actors. And that was interesting to take and use.

J.S. "Abandon your controls, tame your Trolls" are the last words we sing together with the children. For me, this is currently an important message. There are a lot of articles about problems in schools and the fact that there is a lot of aggression. We don't think this can be solved by control alone. Everyone has their own troll. Our show is intended to inspire gentle contact. That's why after each performance we will leave a square of our material in the classroom, which will be somewhere on the side and to which we will be able to return in memory, but also to the performance, to a certain quality of being together.

Thank you for the conversation

 

TROLLS

Creators:
directing: Justyna Sobczyk
sets and costumes: Wisłomira Nicieja
music: Sebastian Świąder
movement: Agnieszka Kryst
production: Paulina Uryszek
coordination: Wiktoria Siedlecka-Dorosz
graphic: Karolina Witowska-Ćirlić

Cast:
Grzegorz Brandt, Anna Drózd, Jan Kowalewski, Anna Łuczak, Michał Pęszyński, Cecylia Sobolewska, Marta Stańczyk, Piotr Swend, Justyna Wielgus

 

Theatre 21 was born in 2005 out of a workshop at the "Dać Szansę" Social Special School Complex in Warsaw. The actors are mainly students and graduates of the school - people with Down's syndrome and autism. Their former fun in theatre has turned into a job for which they are paid. The performances of Theatre 21 could be seen in Warsaw theatres (Dramatyczny, Studio, Powszechny, Nowy, Baj, Soho), the Museum of the History of Polish Jews POLIN and the Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute, which is the main place of the group's activity. The group has also performed at festivals in Poland (Wrocław, Poznań, Węgajty, Gdańsk, Kalisz, Łódź, Kielce, Białystok, Pszczyna, Lublin) and abroad (Prague, Neratov, Berlin, Helsinki, Freiburg). Artists, educators and researchers working on a daily basis in cultural institutions all over Poland collaborate with Theatre 21. The group is led by Justyna Sobczyk.