„Nic do patrzenia”? Odys i inni

• Authors: Stacewicz-Podlipska Joanna

Title variants

EN

“Nothing to Look At?” Odysseus and Others

Abstracts

EN

The term “visual theatre” is one of the most problematic words in the vocabulary of Polish stage actions. Before the Second World War, it was clearly set in opposition to the traditional 19th-century bourgeois theatre of the literary and psychological kind. Even right after the War, the term was still restricted to a small group of high-quality, and often hermetic, artistic projects, and it did not raise too many objections. Yet with time, as stage experiments stemming from the ground prepared by the pre-war avant-garde masters were gaining new aspects and the term was used in reference to an increasing number of sometimes very varied artistic projects, the definition of the phenomenon became fuzzy. The post-war generation were fighting on a whole new front; the objectives and arms of the offensive changed; the former pioneers became classics, and audacious attacks on the status quo became part of the canon. Stage designing had emancipated itself in the course of the Great Theatre Reform, and individual contributions made by visual artists to the productions they worked on with directors no longer raised any eyebrows. Struggle for an autonomous space of artistic expression was no longer fought by artistic movements, but by individuals whose artistic visions, inextricably bound with their experience of war, led to a whole new formula for creating on-stage worlds. The imprecise and confusing name, indicating profusion of the visual aspect of the theatre production as the genre qualifier for certain artistic actions, led to an increasing opposition against the term. Associations with an excessive emphasis on the visual side of the performance and qualitative results of such practices as well as false assumptions that suggested a programmatic demand that the visual aspect of the spectacle be emancipated generated increasing opposition and irritation. In time, even some artists whose art, like the work by Kantor and Grzegorzewski, could be classified almost mechanically as “visual theatre” started objecting to the label. The term in question came under careful scrutiny of theatre theoreticians and scholars who undertook numerous attempts to confront it with the reality on stage. Today it may seem that the problems caused by its usage and doubts as to how justified it is to apply the popular term in reference to numerous on-stage worlds are just consequences of several terminological conflations. In principle, the underlying fact is that the same name has been used in reference to practices of different origins, emerging in different contexts, channelling different creative forces, and, finally, representing varied artistic qualities. One needs to discriminate, however, between the critique of the term, its accuracy, semantic capaciousness and justifiability of its usage on the one hand and an obvious statement that some artists have at their disposal some visual tools that make their work stand out in this respect. Wyspiański, who must be deemed a champion of “visually sensitive” works of Polish theatre, wrote that there are individuals who “see things differently” in contrast to those with “untrained eyesight.” In the case of Kantor, Grzegorzewski and other “directors-and-painters” the role that this exceptional eyesight played in the process of composing the activity onstage was undeniably substantial. This unique, because reserved for trained visual artists, sensitivity to non-verbal, multisensory modes of communication made the building material of their on-stage worlds absorb more non-textual layers of meaning than was usually the case. This sensitivity became especially pronounced in the respective productions of Powrót Odysa (The Return of Odysseus) prepared by Kantor and Grzegorzewski; the productions based on Wyspiański’s text became idiomatic for the artistic languages of these theatre artists.

Keywords

EN

theatre history; theatre studies; Polish theatre

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Sztuki PAN
• Journal: Pamiętnik Teatralny
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 64
• Issue: 3-4(255-256)
• Pages: 220-257

Contributors

author

Stacewicz-Podlipska Joanna

• Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk

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