"Everything flows" Vasily Grossman, directed by Janusz Opryński

Warsaw premiere November 28, 2019 SOHO Theatre

The performance is an account of hell told through the mouths of two characters - Anna and Jan. She - a witness of the great famine in Ukraine, He - a long-term prisoner of the camps. The play attempts to confront the experience of human hunger, the stigma of the Soviet gulag, and to find space to speak the heaviest words about man.

adaptation and directing: Janusz Opryński
cast: Elisa Borowska and Slawomir Grzymkowski

Before the premiere, I spoke to Slawomir Grzymkowski about the performance of Everything Flows and his collaboration with Janusz Opryński, the author of the adaptation and director of the show.

Tomasz Ostrowski: You began your collaboration with Janusz Opryński in 2013. You met during the production of Ice by Jacek Dukaj at the Provisorium Theatre. Not counting readings, you are currently working on your fifth and sixth joint productions. These are the productions of Vasily Grossman's Everything Flows by SOHO Theatre and Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Beseyer on the Wola Stage of the Dramatic Theatre (premiere 13.12.2019). Do you feel like an artist of Janusz Opryński's theatre? What is the compelling creative magic of Janusz Opryński?

Slawomir Grzymkowski: I feel I am an actor of Janusz Opryński's. Until recently, Janusz Opryński's productions were quite rare. For a few years now he has started directing in other theatres, but I have the impression that the bond which has formed between Janusz Opryński, Łukasz Lewandowski and me is unusual and seems to be unique. We enjoy working together. I have the impression that we are people who inspire each other. We have also managed to transfer a certain kind of work from the rehearsals of Teatr Provisorium to an institutional theatre such as Teatr Dramatyczny. I hope this collaboration will last as long as possible. Janusz has opened a new chapter in my theatrical history. I owe him a lot and I hope we will work together again.

The Warsaw premiere of Everything Flows was preceded by the Lublin premiere at the XXIV Theatrical Confrontations, but as I recall, the story of this performance already began at the XXI Confrontations in 2016, where the performance ''Point Zero: Graceful'' directed by Janusz Opryński was also presented.

The production Everything Flows, which is having its Warsaw premiere right now, had a Lublin premiere before, as you said, because it is a co-production of PROVISORIUM Theatre and SOHO Theatre. Its origins are in a project that we did in 2016 also at the Confrontations in Lublin. It was a sixteen-minute performance as part of the Micro Theatre project organised by Komuna Warszawa. Janusz invited me and Eliza Borowska to a project created on the basis of Vasily Grossman's text Everything Flows. It was one monologue spoken by Eliza, but the form was quite interesting. We were able to create a strong metaphor using two bodies that were between death and love, between dead bodies in death camps and bodies lying somewhere in a village in Ukraine. Between something very human, alive and deep which is the love between two people. This sixteen-minute project made a big impression and somehow we had it in our heads that this was an unfinished situation and perhaps we could return to it at some point. Recently, Igor Gorzkowski suggested to Janusz that he should do something at the SOHO Theatre. As a result, Janusz returned to the idea of expanding the material of Everything Flows. We expanded the text of the play with additional monologues and dressed it up in a rather specific theatrical form. In a way, this is another interesting experiment for us as well. After the October premiere in Lublin, where we had a good reception from the audience, we will now play at the SOHO Theatre in Warsaw from 28 November.

In 2016, Janusz Oprynski prepared the performance 'Point Zero: Graceful'.This was his original adaptation of Jonathan Littell's novel 'Graceful' and quotes from two novels by Vasily Grossman, 'Life and Fate' and 'Everything Flows'. Can the material of Everything Flows be related to the plot of the play Graceful?

Yes. Janusz's work must be viewed through the prism of his performances. All these plays, starting from "The Brothers Karamazov", through "Ice" , through "Mercy", then "The Idiot" or "The Master and Margarita", and on top of that our current productions: "Everything Flows" and Dostoevsky's "Biesy" at the Dramatic Theatre, are all connected. They are thematically linked and belong to a large block that Janusz has been dealing with for many years. It's about the most important questions about God, about humanity, about who we are. We try to look at evil. How evil shapes us, how evil penetrates us. Are we simply beings who are filled with evil? Are we beings who can fight evil and is there a God in all of this. What is most interesting in Janusz's work is the search for a new theatrical language for literature such as Dostoyevsky, Dukaj, Littell, Grossman. Dukaj has not been realised in the theatre before. For us it was extremely interesting. For me it was a very significant experience, difficult and important. We had to create a theatrical language for this kind of literature. We were, in a way, pioneers trying to embrace the theme and the space of this huge novel, but also the philosophical space contained in this book. It was the same with The Gracious Ones. Littell had previously been presented in fragments in Krzysztof Warlikowski's '(A)pollonia' at the Nowy Theatre. But never before had there been a production adapting his work. Janusz is a specialist in the realisation of such grand narratives. Because they are not plays, they are not dramas, they are novels. He has previously dealt with Gombrowicz and Różewicz, among others, but at the moment he is mainly concerned with literature. He writes adaptations, phenomenally, by the way. I think he is one of the most outstanding creators who can do adaptations of great literature and translate it into theatrical language.

What is Janusz Opryński's collaboration with actors like? You can see over the last few years that it is a permanent group of actors who are very keen to work with him. This must mean that he treats the actors who work with him with the same respect as he treats literature?

There is a group of actors who are actually very keen to work with Janusz, because to tell you the truth, once you meet Janusz on your theatrical path, you absolutely fall in love with him. He is simply a wonderful person. He has some unlimited knowledge of philosophy and literature. We all learn something new every time we meet him. Even if the topics are similar we go to new sources, to books and studies. Janusz always travels with a handy library, he has bags, really bags of books with him, which he carries with him on every attempt and he gives everyone something to read, something that will enrich his character, the story of the characters in this novel. He gives us all these things to read, also elaborations around which to build your character. And I can confidently say that the team now working with Janusz on 'Bies' trusts him absolutely. He loves the actors, by the way, and he lets them know it and shows it. The working atmosphere is excellent. Of course, we feel a kind of responsibility. But we are measuring ourselves against gigantic literature and this uncertainty is always there. This meeting is amazing and it will definitely stay in each of us.

In conclusion to our conversation, we can say that respect for literature and the word spoken from the stage characterises Janusz Opryński's directing workshop.

Janusz has an absolute respect for literature. He looks for his own theatrical language for each realisation. As was the case with "Ice" or "Point Zero. Graceful." These were the first realisations of these novels in Poland. And it is the same with Grossman's Everything Flows. We were looking for a theatrical language that would allow us to speak these tragic words written on the pages of Grossman's book. It seems to us that this is not a strictly theatrical project, that it is a kind of presentation, some kind of meeting between victims and spectators. This performance could just as well be presented in a 'word gallery', or a contemporary art gallery, because here the word is the most important element of the performance.This is how Janusz works. He is very insightful. He is probably one of the few artists at the moment who read literature in this way.

In a way, these two upcoming premieres, Everything Flows and Biesy, are connected. It's certainly worth looking at Janusz's work as a kind of continuity, and I suggest looking at it, following it and finding the tropes common to all these plays. We're also going back to Littell. We're about to reissue 'Point Zero. Graceful." We might be able to play this show again in Warsaw, and if not, we invite you to Lublin.

Thank you for the interview. I wish you a long cooperation with Janusz Opryński and many experiences in your joint search for a new language for theatre in your future adaptations of works of literature.

Also Thank You.

 

EVERYTHING FLOWS Vasily Grossman, directed by Janusz Opryński
TEATR SOHO
Warsaw Premiere November 28, 2019
world premiere: 10 October 2019 (Theatre Confrontations in Lublin)

The performance is an account of hell told through the mouths of two characters - Anna and Jan. She - a witness of the great famine in Ukraine, He - a long-term prisoner of the camps. The play attempts to confront the experience of human hunger, the stigma of the Soviet gulag, and to find space to speak the heaviest words about man.

adaptation and directing: Janusz Opryński
cast: Elisa Borowska and Slawomir Grzymkowski

Light: Jan Piotr Szamryk
visualisations: Aleksander Janas / kilku.com
production coordination: Barbara Sawicka
cooperation: Dorota Stochmalska