"GROCHÓW" under the artistic supervision of Agnieszka Glinska

Premiere 11 October 2019 - Warsaw Dramatyczny Theatre.

Before the premiere, I spoke to Łukasz Lewandowski, the author of the script and also an actor in the production.

Tomasz Ostrowski: When I read the stories from the collection Grochów by Andrzej Stasiuk, I do not find the laboratory I see here. Will the performance be a vivisection of our psyche, an analysis of our feelings about the processes of ageing, dying, passing away?

Lukasz Lewandowski: Well, maybe everything in part. Least of all this aging, more loss, rather change, some kind of emptiness. But, of course, it is a kind of return, as it seems to us, an insightful, laboratory return. As one gentleman here said, a kind of archaeological return to what we are made of, who built us, who brought me up. What brought me up? As we ourselves know, we have different approaches to these phenomena, to these foundations from which we were born. We adopt different attitudes. It is no coincidence that this whole laboratory is hidden in there somewhere.

Actors often hide from the audience in the back streets of this laboratory.

Yes, but this projection is not random here. Is this some kind of attempt to find out how much of my projection of my world that we are made of is built of something, who built it, and whether it is real or not? These are all the components that we try to sort out in different ways, each of us in different ways, or look at them, or listen to them, or smell them, see them again, ask what kind of rubber boots it is, what kind of Bear it is, what kind of postcard it is, what kind of letter it is…

In this staging, do you only refer to the last of the four stories from the volume "Grochow"?

Yes, only for the story 'Grochow'.

The first three, very short stories - about a grandmother who contacts ghosts in the last period of her life, a writer neighbour who is dying and a sixteen-year-old dog completely passive to its surroundings from old age - are a literarily excellent introduction to the story 'Grochow' about a terminally ill friend.

Well, yes, but you have to make some kind of choice, you have to try to tell some kind of non-linear story in this case, but also to put it together in some kind of sense. It seemed to us that these first three stories, these three signals could be placed in this staging layer, that these elements in our performance are somewhere in the middle.

As one reads the collection of short stories it seems that Stasiuk's narrative is difficult to translate to the stage.

Maybe it's difficult, but I have this feeling that there are some texts that I would regret leaving just on the shelf. The kind of passages that someone has written, someone has created in a way that is brilliant to me, and I would like to hear it out loud. I would like to hear it out loud. I would like someone to be with me when it falls. It's a shame for it to remain only in this intimate relationship: the reader, the book and the author. Maybe more people can be invited to travel together.

Thank you for talking to me.

 

GROCHÓW – Andrzej Stasiuk
Creators:
artistic care – Agnieszka Glińska
the script – Łukasz Lewandowski
space – Monika Nyckowska
dolls – Marcin Bikowski
music – Igor Nikiforow

Cast:
Marcin Bartnikowski, Marcin Bikowski, Łukasz Lewandowski