Radicalization
Piotr Gruszczyński, TYGODNIK POWSZECHNY
Neither John Paul II nor the 4th Polish Republic. The world shown by Przemysław Wojcieszek does not conform to the norms of any new ethical or patriotic projects. Still, the heroes of his play, young inhabitants of Warsaw, live in the shadow of these projects.
The heroines of the performance are two girls. Magda (Agnieszka Podsiadlik) comes from the back country, the other - Sugar (Roma Gąsiorowska) is an urban smartass who knows how to find life's attractions. The former was expelled from home when her family learned she is a lesbian. The latter lives with a mother, abandoned by the father.
The girls fall in love with each other in their own way. The former with all devotion and shyness, the latter spontaneously but not completely. Oppressed by the wild capitalism of the fried chicken stand (the already shown ironically, jeered and sneered at, parody of corporation in the "made in Poland" version), sexually harassed by the owner's son in law (Eryk Lubos) and picked up by their friend (Rafał Maćkowiak), who wants to become an actor only to have sex with a different girl every night, they go to slams.
It could have been an almost lyrical story, about love that fills the life of the main characters with meaning, about those who dropped out from the mainstream career path in the flourishing Polish capitalism. It would have been so if the action took place in London, Paris or New York. But not in the 4th Polish Republic. Here, in Poland, the fragile structure of emotions growing between the two heroines gets confronted with the homophobic world.
The sources of this homophobia might be different for every character. The reason might be the want to be a macho, the conservative notion of family or the All-Polish exultation. The representative of national and catholic values is Piotr (Krzysztof Czeczot), Sugar's brother, who on learning that his sister is a lesbian decides to go to a war to Iraq. When he returns and finds his sister co-habitating with Magda in his mother's house, he starts the All-Polish hell. He drinks and he beats, resorting to violence to convert his sister and her fiancee ("dikes have no fiancées") to what he believes is normal. When the violence does not work, he leaves home and half-naked, wrapped in a white and red flag he goes on an animal-like drinking spree. He also invites his father to come back home and he makes plans for building a multigenerational family according to his own undisputable norm.
In the text of the play published in "Dialog" (no 10/05) there is a scene in which Piotr, rejected by his father and mates returns to his mother and apologises to her promising change. But the scene is missing in the show. It would have rung hollow. Piotr does not have to repent. For sure, he will not be left alone. The opening night took place a week after the Presidential Elections and inadvertently became their commentary. For it turns out that young playwrights start to notice enemies worse than the Polish version of the wild capitalism.
Sugar does not dream of making a career and conquering the free market. She is a kind of freak, every two weeks, on principle, she changes work (from the fried food stand to the pizza house), she has no material ambitions, wants to become a poetess. Even her innate smartassedness and contempt for
various suckers (e.g. actors) does not drive her to make money. Sugar wants to be the winner of poetry slams. Magda, also feels neither defeated nor unhappy, she accepts her situation, she slaves away for 4,50 per hour washing up plates, dreaming that one day she will get away to Prague or Berlin, but not to improve her material standard. Prague or Berlin are the cities of tolerance. Magda has a dream that one day her relationship with a woman will not cause sensation, for in Poland even the mere acceptance of homosexuality raises suspicion. She wants to build a lasting relationship with Sugar. The play ends with her debut on the slam. Magda reads out a naive and utterly moving text being a radical declaration of love for Sugar and of aversion to the place where she lives.
Wojcieszek uses the language of the street. The text is extremely vulgar at times, even the poems recited on the slams, written by a Warsaw poet - Marcin Cecko (connected to the Theatrical Studium of Piotr Borowski), are vulgar. The dramatist tries to level the distance between the stage and the street. He does not take great pains to perfect the show, either. He directs with a flourish, but sloppily, nonchalantly, letting things drift. He belongs to a new group of directors who are primarily interested in the message directly linked to the reality. The informal character of the performance is conducive to spontaneous reception. The spectators quickly forget about the borders separating them from the stage. What is more, Wojcieszek's show is very funny. There is no place for sentimentality or sob stories in it. Life hardened the heroes who live too fast, taking full responsibility, to feel sorry for themselves.
In comparison with the well-known "Made in Poland" staged in Legnica, "Cokolwiek się zdarzy" is a much more intelligent performance. The director dared to look upon his characters with some reserve and a hint of levity. The actors, too, with the onstage spontaneity and the excellence of their performance decreased slightly declarative nature of some parts of the text. The live performance of the Pustki band relaxes the discipline imposed by the theatrical frames, changing the evening into a meeting of rather indeterminate character.
In 1998 Grzegorz Jarzyna staged in Teatr Dramatyczny in Warsaw Niezidentyfikowane szczątki ludzkie / Unidetified human remains. The text of a Canadian writer depicted people lost in the jungle of Western town. It was only eight years ago and yet we can see that since then a whole epoch has passed. Not only due to the fact that plays like "Niezidentyfikowane szczątki ludzkie" are abundant in our home dramaturgy.
After the premiere Jarzyna was reproached by pointing out that the matters and the problems he spoke about do not refer to our part of the world, that they are ills of large Western urban agglomerations. Now we know for sure that the fried chicken stand where Wojcieszek placed the action of the play looks exactly the same in Warsaw and London, and even in Toronto. One works there in the same way and earns equally badly. The emotional problems may differ but they do not really depend on the country, rather on the person.
In this globalised stand of inedible fried chickens Wojcieszek picked out a very Polish subject - intolerance to homosexuals - and threw it into the radical theatre of everyday communication and discussion, where the condition to create a work of art is not a top priority. The art is only necessary when it is a vehicle for a message, it has to make it attractive and memorable. This is a novelty in Polish theatre, this is something that is present in Klata's shows. And this is well worth having a good look.