Fall and Departure

Jacek Kopciński, TEATR

The first association – the Eastern art of caligraphy. A Buddhist monk kneels in front of a sheet of snow-white paper and with one stroke of his brush paints a sophisticated sign in black. Then a second, a third and yet another. Each letter is a separate piece of art but combined they make an exceptional composition: simple, precise, perfect and beautiful. Grzegorz Jarzyna constructed his latest performance from a few dozen short scenes, which one would like to sum up with the same comment. Generally speaking, thoughts spring to mind only in series in response to ”T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T.”, as if the text of the play consisted of some lines of Eastern meditation given to us by the director. The performance does not start a discussion, nor a dispute, it does not provide us with arguments, either. After watching it, even a short conversation with friends seems redundant. With simple and sophisticated pictures hiding a mystery inside, ”T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T.” calms the voices constantly throbbing in our head and postpones the discourses without which contemporary art can no longer function. Isn’t this surprising when we take into account the venue of the premiere?

A year and a half ago on this very stage René Pollesch ingeniously de-constructed the mechanism of theatrical representation. In his performance actors played actors who no longer want to be actors and their actions were changing with each minute into a metaphor of a rebellion of people who insistently question the common reality of perfomance. Their way of escaping their roles, both theatrical and social, was a never-ending reflection on language – language perceived not as a tool for expression, cognition and communication but as an instrument of power. Language, like a dragon hidden in a cave, terrorises the inhabitants of the global village, imposes ways of thinking and behaving on them, defines their identity, relations and attitudes, decides on their status, value and mere existence. To defeat the dragon one should talk him out, reply with a hundred words to his single word. By multiplying our own, alternative discourses one should constantly relativise and weaken the violence of the language – and by this seek personal freedom. We are living in the postmodern world of contradictory messages, competing narrations and tales excluding one another, where their effectiveness is decided upon by money, politics and the media. In order to make us aware of this, the German director transported all this tumult onto the stage and exposed it, finally revealing the existential emptiness of the people in the performance – those miserable story-tellers who believed that there is no world beyond the discourse.

Jarzyna is not one of them. Although during his management of TR Warszawa the borders between ideological discourse and performance have almost disappeared (and the most spectacular example of this is ”Shoemakers at the Gates” by Jan Klata), sensitivity, esthetics and the sense of the director’s artisitc activities remained separate from the Theatre’s. Jarzyna did try to join in the stream of German-type political theatre padded with now fashionable criticism of neoliberalism but he quickly realised that it is much easier for him to write catchy manifestos than to implement them on stage. ”The time has come to redefine our identity in the new situation, to analyse how the latest transformations have influenced our way of living and our perception of reality” – he declared in 2005 when inititiating a new programme – TR/PL, the aim of which was the promotion of the new Polish dramaturgy. It is characteristic, however, that until now he has not directed any of the plays commisioned by the theatre. ”TR is again in need of an immediate attack” – he preached, although his recent city action turned out to be a tactical game rather than a war.

Even the biggest fans of theatre happenings in a desolate factory, on the underground or in a taxi quickly realised that the true measure of a director’s talent and skills is a performance. Jarzyna’s closest co-worker and also his greatest competitior – Krzysztof Warlikowski – was well-aware of that. When Warlikowski was directing ”Storm”, ”Dybuk”, ”Krum”, and finally ”Angels in America”, Jarzyna initiated subsequent ”strikes”, gradually changing his theatre into a combat group, a laboratory or a common room for young contenders, followers of ”Krytyka Polityczna” magazine. He still eagerly admits postmodernist prophets into his theatre, but in fact his mind is driven by the great myths of modernism, and above all by the concept of art as the key to the cognition of unattainable – because they have been pushed into our subconsciousness – elements of sacrum.

Isn’t it syptomatic that in the programme of ”T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T.” we find no extracts from the works of e.g., Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Zygmunt Bauman or Maria Janion but instead from Karl Jaspers, Gerardus van der Leeuw or Mircea Eliade whose by now classic reflections on the condition of the contemporary descendant of the former homo religious brilliantly correspond with the message of Jarzyna’s best performances. ”A man creates himself, and he is able to really do it only when he desecrates himself and the world. Sacredness stands in the way of his freedom. He cannot become himself before he totally demystifies himself. He cannot be really free before he kills the last god” – wrote Eliade and Jarzyna adapted ”Yvonne, the Princess of Burgundy” by Gombrowicz to show the process in reverse, when the murdered sacredness returns in the body of a beautiful, brave girl permeated with some inexplicable power, who exposes the cruel emptiness of the demystified world. Ten years have passed since that premiere, and although Jarzyna did not achieve such success as it was in case of ”Yvonne…” , the manager/activist/ideologist in him has not defeated the artist. As a matter of fact Horst Leszczuk has always been a poet in the theatre, someone who continuously looks for the mystery of existence under the surface of social and political processes – laughing at the critics’ ”principle of stage representation”, without which his theatre could simply not exist. Jarzyna’s disciplined and formalised art seems to be the realisation of a totally different artistic theory than that which, after Freud, we usually connect with the therapy of neuroses. The director does not exorcise his own phobias in the theatre, although his performances are to a great extent personal. The artist dedicated his latest performance to his father.

Let us briefly outline a theorema of Jarzyna’s theatrical work (the Greek word theorema actually means ”theory”). First of all, Jarzyna is a director of limit situations and not without reason he quotes Karl Jaspers in the programme of ”T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T.”. ”By limit situations I understand the fact that I am constantly in some situations, I cannot live without struggle and sufferring, that I take the blame and cannot avoid it, and lastly that I may die” – explains the philosopher. ”Limit situations do not change, only the way they appear varies; they are final with reference to our empiric existence”. This kind of existential culmination, when knowledge and experience become a component of the same, absolute consciousness, Jaspers calls ”the rise of being in me”, and since the beginning of his work in the theatre Jarzyna has looked for the language capable of presenting the rise on the stage. We remember very well those tension-permeated scenes from ”Tropical Craze”, ”Yvonne” or ”Prince Myshkin” in which the motionless figure of the main hero almost explodes the frame of the stage with the energy coming from within them. This is accentuated by trance music and the incredible light, evoking a barely perceptible but all the same intense effect of the world’s hyper-reality.

”T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T.” is in this respect the most refined of all Jarzyna’s works. The director has reached a stage in his theatrical work, in which Jaspers’s mystery of limit situations meets the – equally difficult to express – mystery of art. It consists in abstracting from reality its hidden, spiritual formula while at the same time preserving and even emphasising the material image of things and phenomena. Like in the paintings of the great 20th century painters, such as Jerzy Nowosielski or Edward Hopper, whose hotel rooms bathed in sunlight seem to be a direct inspiration for the set-designer (Magdalena Maciejewska) and the lighting director (Jacqueline Sobiszewski). And also in the films of the great directors of the previous era of artistic cinema, among whom Pasolini plays an important part. Many times attention has been drawn to Jarzyna’s cinematic imagination, nonetheless one should also point out that the rythm of illuminations and blackouts by which his latest performance is governed does not have much in common with the effect of a film cut. He uses it rather to illuminate a picture, usually totally motionless at the beginning, only later coming alive as a result of the character’s actions. The picture, which is always very sparing, even during the characters’ strong emotional reactions, is bound by a form which reduces movement to a theatrical minimum making it immensely prominent and meaningful. In ”T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T.” the smallest gesture becomes a suggestive message, especially when the director imposes some barely noticeable rythm, subtle symmetry and repetitiveness on it and removes its over-vulgar sensuality.

Placing his characters in a limit situation – which we shall describe later on – Jarzyna bestows so little external life upon them that everything that constitutes their external life seems to be a symbol of something totally different. The effect of the hyper-real intensity of the picture is emphasised by the sound direction, particularly the way the voices reach our ears. The actors in ”T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T.” use microphones, although the stage is not big and the acoustics are good enough for such recognised actors like Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieślak, Danuta Stenka or Jan Englert – focused, attentive, expressive and faithful to Jarzyna’s well-thought-over formula in this performance. Still, Jarzyna equips them with microphones – with the exception of sequences from Paolo’s interview which enclose the performance – in order to free the characters’ words from the requirements of stage elocution. The word is audible but does not attract our attention and it may as well disappear.

The sound direction in Jarzyna’s performance slightly resembles Pasolini’s in his film. Among graphic images and the moving sounds of Mozart’s ”Requiem”, the dialogues sound like the quiet buzz of mosquitoes. The Greek word theorema means not only ”theory” or ”statement” but also ”view”. Pasolini in his work which is almost deprived of dialogues demonstrates the principle of human life and contemplates on it – we read the family scenes of an industrialist from Milan like a tacit allegory. The Polish director adapts Pasolini’s idea of the devaluation of the word in contemporary life and the value of silence, and at the same time he copies Pasolini’s poetics, consciously intensifying the effect of the theatrical conventionality of the message. As a result his performance becomes even more allegoric than the Master’s.

And lastly, Jarzyna is a director of primal myths exposed in the life of modern people, liberated from the restrictions of some higher order. It is worth mentioning that only once (and that was not recently) did he use a ”re-written” version of an antique tragedy („[mede:a]” in the Burgtheater in Vienna), as if the Greek principle of human life did not comply with the director’s perception of the world. His performances are full of symbols stemming from the Christian universum and refer to such spiritual experiences as temptation, sin, penance or sacrifice. For some reason – and I think it is not a solely esthetic one – the director of ”Yvonne...”, ”Myshkin” and ”Mackbeth” often recalls biblical myths, which is generally significant and in ”T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T.”, crucial. Crucial in the same way as the question the main character is asked in the prologue and epilogue – ”Do you believe in God?” – is crucial for the plot. Paolo’s answer is not a rational declaration but a shocking gesture of dissmising everything that has constituted his existence so far. It is no coincidence that we associate it with Christian emptying (kenosis), although I would not dare make those two realities equal.
Jarzyna has never described himself as a believer, his provocative performances are not in the least confessional, and their point usually deviates from theology. In this way however, he depicts the existential ”rise of being” in his characters to see in it at least a reflection of the primal religious experience in which God or Daemon enters human life.

The structure of Pasolini’s film and Jarzyna’s performance is actually identical. The villa of an Italian industrialist is visited by a young stranger, who in a couple of days establishes an intimate relationship with all the family members: Paolo’s son – Pietro, his wife Lucia and his daughter Odetta and lastly, with Paolo. Then he disappears leaving his hosts in the state of a mighty psychological crisis. The stranger is not really a type of a seducer with flexible erotic preferences. Actually, he is not anyone – his identity is not defined at all. We do not know where he comes from, what he does and why he came to Paolo’s house. Nobody is interested in those facts. The family members accept him naturally, as if he were a hero of their collective dream who is not to be asked any questions. The moment he appears is characteristic – it is as if the hero of ” T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T.” called him out of nothingness and then saw his younger double in him (which brings to mind the first scene of ”Wedding” by Gombrowicz). In fact, Paolo and his family are having a collective dream of humanity, whose most important ”version ” we know from the third chapter of the Book of Genesis. The Guest is nothing but a contemporary embodiment of biblical temptation, which drove people out of paradise and lead them to ruin. The temptation is strictly erotic. Pasolini shows the tight trousers of the hero more often than his face, which may be explained by the homoeroticism of the director, but such an explanation is not necessary as penis also tempts women in ”T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T.” Its hypnotic power overwhelms all the family members, it is shown in a more subtle way in Jarzyna’s performance than in the film. Pasolini was a scandaliser but ”Teorema” was not the reason why he was accused of pornography. Sex in the film is a mere potential, the forbidden fruit which the family members are reaching out for – like the first people on the way out of Paradise. What is more, we cannot speak about seduction here. The young, slender man (by Sebastian Pawlak) is simply there and he reacts when he is called for. It is they/the family members who make the first move, the first gesture. The embarrassed maid lies down on the floor, the upset son wakes up at night and peeks under the naked man’s sheets, his excited mother undresses herself. The Guest only reacts to the invitation and fulfills dreams of those particular people in the ways they suggested.

The allegorical nature of Jarzyna’s performance does not kill the truth of interpersonal interactions which suddenly come to life after the Guest’s arrival. The scene in the son’s bedroom is comical, as Pietro (by Jan Dravnel), clumsy, scared and unsure of his own manhood, performs a funny dance which might be entitled: ”the taking off of white pants”. However, the meeting with Lucia (by Danuta Stenka) is a completely different story. Before they have sexual intercourse they both perform complicated erotic rituals: they fill glasses with cigarette smoke and drink it like some love potion. Jarzyna, like Pasolini, does not really show sexual acts. Bodies embrace and disappear in the blackout, as if the point was not the sexual fulfillment but crossing some impassable, unsensed even, border.

The border between what and what? The uninvited but – as it turned out – welcome Guest arrives at Paolo’s house as though arriving in ”Paradise”, in which the only God is the artificial order of the rich man’s family. It is shown in the performance by the interior of a large, light room with windows overlooking the city – the city might well be Warsaw or Cracow – from where we can hear church bells, and by the appearance and actions of particular family members. A serious father sitting at the desk and constantly writing something in his industrialist’s diary. A beautiful but withdrawn mother sitting in front of a mirror and with great concentration touching up her makeup. And finally, the son and daughter, dressed in expensive, classic cardigans, carefully combing their hair before they turn to their daily tasks: composition writing, building a wooden plane (Pietro) or taking pictures of their beloved father (Odetta). In the background of this ”heavenly” picture we can see a silent maid in a black dress, laying the table or mopping the impeccably clean floor. The order in Paolo’s house hides a deadness of feelings, ritualised emptiness. It would be a mistake, however, to blame the parents, society or the political system. Certainly, from time to time a merry postman visits them (by Rafał Maćkowiak), a typically Italian character of a simple peasant, daring and lively, unlike the educated rich. It’s no accident that Pasolini calls him Angiolo, that is… a little angel. This funny, very childish messenger brings letters, kisses and the promise of love, but no one treats him seriously, so he soon flies away. Only the arrival of the Guest breaks the routine of the inhabitants of the luxurious villa, it adds gravity and flavour to their artificial existence, as if the road to life had to lead through sin.

After they have eaten the fruit brought by the Stranger, they realise they are all naked… that by this one act they have slammed the door shut on the heavenly villa for ever and are no longer protected in the world which they wanted to get to know so much. And that there is no way back, although there are many paths before them. The disinheritance from the ”artificial paradise” may turn out to be an existential catastrophy for them, but may also be the beginning of real maturity – and this very moment, this sensation, seems to be the ”rise” Jaspers wrote about. Jarzyna in a series of excellent scenes presents different scenarios of life after the ”fall”. They form two separate patterns: stagnation and departure.

The person who is most aware of the essence of the events in Paolo’s villa is the Maid Emilia (by Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieślak). As soon as the Guest disappears this religious woman (Jarzyna shows her praying) packs her suitcase and returns to the countryside to repent for her sin. In Pasolini’s film, after many days of fasting and prayer Emilia, previously recognised by the common folk as a Saint, levitates and then lets them bury her, although she stays alive. She says she shall spend the rest of her life mourning the human world. Jarzyna equips Emilia with a Franciscan feature, drawing motives from another of Pasolini’s films, i.e. ”The Hawks and the Sparrows”. In the beautiful scene of the Maid with the swallows the conversation is mute, and the swallows filmed – the words, a simple profession of faith in God who is love, are projected onto the wall.

Rising from the fall, Emilia goes straight to heaven – the road of the others is more difficult. The unleashed eroticism of Lucia drives her to the street, where this beautiful woman gives herself away to strangers as if there were no tomorrow. One night she is raped by a young man strongly resembling her son… The sexually excited Lucia is not able to move forward and she constantly repeats the first experience, in fact contradicting the sense of it. On the other hand Pietro is fixated on his sexual distinctness and narcisisstically and obsessively observes his reflection in the painted portrait of the Stranger. He fights his frustration with infantile rebellion – he unzips his trousers and pees on the painting. His sister Odetta pays a steeper price for the sick addiction to someone else’s phantom. Her relationship with the stranger was a real love initiation and her lover’s disappearance totally paralyses and even kills her. Unexpectedly free – they both are taken captive again.

And finally Paolo. After the unclearly presented ”fall” which represents his symbolic death (the hero reads a story by Tolstoy ”The Death of Ivan Ilich”), he notices the ruin of the world in which he has thrived so far. Following the example of the ascetics and saints he abandons his factory, property and home and leaves for the desert, which in ”T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T.” is not only a symbol of catastrophe but also of penance, and most of all, a place for spiritual transformation where man meets the Absolute. In a poetic monologue Angiolino speaks about the desert as a place of ”life-giving” and ”flaming” emptiness, in which ”darkness”, ”distortion”, ”turmoil”, ”infection” and ”the stench of life” are unthought of. Paradoxically, this mystical phrase should be understood literally – the desert is the state of mind in which even thinking about a fall seems unrealistic.

Jarzyna’s theatrical meditation finishes with a press conference, where Paolo answers journalists’ questions. At the beginning of the performance he introduces himself as a conservative critic of contemporary culture, now he calls himself ”a preacher of apocalypse”. The journalists are surprised by the words of the recent technocrat and seem not to understand them. But Paolo does not say the really important thing into the microphone, but to himself and to the space surrounding him. Earlier he renounced the Gospel but now he speaks with Jesus’ words: ”those who do not have, have everything”. Uttered by a very persuasive Jan Englert the words sound like a lost message, which might soon be changed into some new social utopia (not for the first time). ”I have no expectations, so I do not picture any world to myself” – admits Paolo in defiance of those who would like to use this or some other motive from his ”interview”. For instance, the thought of general exploitation… Paolo’s ambiguous words invoke in Jarzyna’s performance the perspective of finality, so hated by contemporary discourses, especially political discourses. However, it is not the words that are stamped on our memory but the archetypical images sketched by the firm hand of an artist who in silence returns to the top.

Jarzyna has always been a poet in the theatre, someone who continuously looks for the mystery of existence under the surface of the social and political.

The mysterious Guest in Jarzyna’s performance is nothing but a contemporary embodiment of biblical temptation, which drove people out of paradise and lead them to ruin.