New Ancient Gestures

An Interview with Gardzienice’s Wlodzimierz Staniewski

by David Kilpatrick

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Published in Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics, a web publication of The Nietzsche Circle: www.nietzschecircle.com, April 2008. Copyright © 2008 David Kilpatrick and The Nietzsche Circle. All essays, interviews, and reviews are shared copyright between author(s) and The Nietzsche Circle. All rights reserved. Please contact editors for any concerns or for usage rights.

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Since 1977, when Wlodzimierz Staniewski established the Centre for Theatre Practices in the rural village of Gardzienice, in southeast Poland, the company has achieved international acclaim for its unique blend of ethno-musicology and bold athleticism. Gardzienice’s work seems simultaneously in touch with an archaic sensibility while charting new paths, extending new boundaries for the body in performance.

After graduating from Krakow University, where Staniewski worked with the politically and aesthetically daring Theatre STU, he worked with Jerzy Grotowski’s Theatre Laboratory in Wroclaw. Turning from private experiments to a more public forum, with Gardzienice, Staniewski explored the musical forms and performance modes found in rural villages throughout Poland, using “gatherings” or semi-formal performances in village centers to both collect and perform material eventually surfacing in Spektakl Wierczorny [Evening Performance] (1977), Gusla [Sorcery] (1981), and The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum (1983). Carmina Burana (1990) saw the company extend beyond rural Polish material to explore medieval European songs, and with Metamorphoses (1998) the company turned to the myth and music of Greek antiquity for its source material.

With Euripides’ Elektra—(Chieronomia/Gestures): Theatrical Essay (2004), Gardzienice furthered their exploration of performance in classical antiquity. On January 13, 2005, in anticipation of the play’s New York debut at La MaMa, the director sat down at an East Village café to discuss the company’s most recent work.

DK: I understand that Elektra marks a relatively new phase of work for Gardzienice (furthering work that started with Metamorphoses), but was wondering if you could talk about how Elektra stands in relation to your earlier work and this new direction you’re taking.

WS: Metamorphoses was focused on ancient Greek music, so we did quite a bit of research on ancient Greek music—which is almost completely unknown today—especially in theatre. There are books on ancient Greek music, but I don’t know any theatre which would try to reconstruct ancient Greek music. So we’ve been focused on that, we’ve done research and tried to adapt it to our story, which was The Golden Ass of Apuleius, Metamorphoses, and now what is the switch? The switch is from the music to another, let’s say, forgotten means of expression, which was called chieronomia. This was the ancient technique of using gestures, using the hands for gesticulation, like in today’s Kathakali theatre. But this is completely forgotten. Nothing is left as a matter of fact. So our work is focused on studying the images from the vases and trying to get from historical evidence to what’s an expression or view of how would it be like. And this way we invent our alphabet of gesticulation, which is the main means of expression. So it’s something like a pantomime but with a very strict relation to the ancient images taken mainly from the vases. Black and red picture vases. But this is combined with the music and the text. So if you read, for instance, Elektra, you have what we call this didaskalia where it is told “and now Elektra…” after her monologue, it says “and now Elektra gesticulates,” and nothing more. So they were probably using as a part of the entire performance just a sort of pantomime, which had a strict connotation with their way of understanding, with the gesture. Like in today’s Indian theatre, or in Bali. So throughout the performance we use these gestures and the performance is sung, again, and of course all the text or much of the text from Euripides’ Elektra is used.

DK: Do you think that Euripides, Sophocles or Aeschylus, when they were teaching the text, that they would have composed gestures as a part of the piece?

WS: Definitely, definitely! They were taught in let’s say the schools, like the schools for young ephebes, for young boys, they were taught gesticulation and it was going so far that they were told to paint to make a drawing of the master paintings, the master paintings of the time and later on to use it as a sort of inspiration for the, one would say, pantomime, but I would use this word: chieronomia. And it wasn’t just to give poses, you know, it was used for the grace of the movement.

DK: So Nietzsche would say the birth of tragedy in the spirit of music, but you would say in the spirit of gesture?

WS: That’s what I would say today, after doing the study.

DK: But the musicology that’s gone into the production as well, have you focused on trying to recover tragic music, or just ancient Greek music?

WS: We’ve been using again ancient Greek music, the big part of the music which was not used in Metamorphoses and other writings, which was adapted specifically for this performance and adopted specifically for this technique of chieronomia. So the way of the music is let’s say to re-invent. You cannot talk about reconstruction of the music because it’s nothing like it, you can’t have it, you can only reinvent. The way it was reinvented is it was strictly connected with chieronomia, with the technique of gesticulation. So I would say that the frequency of the body, the frequency of the hand, the dynamics of the hand were very influential for the way music was adapted for this performance. Usually I would work the other way around: I would take the music first, but then I would try to use the music as a sort of inspiration, as an impulse to find out the dynamics of the text and dynamics of the body. Now it was another way around; the impulse was gesticulation.

DK: So with this vocabulary of gesticulation, how many different movements are there? Is there a set number that each character works with or the entire company?

WS: No, the entire company. We have like a code, like an alphabet, which is rather strict now, and which expresses, explains and expresses, a given emotion, given symbols, given characters. For instance this is Euripides, this is Elektra, or so on. I’m not going to show it because you don’t have a camera, just a tape recorder.

DK: So this play of a code would then be like a secret code for the performers but the audience can’t penetrate it though?

WS: They can penetrate it because the way we are doing the performance is structured in that way that we’re doing a sort of like … in a book they would call it a preface or prologue and we explain [the gestures] to the public. Of course, the public is not able to memorize everything but the public understands clearly that those gestures are not improvised or a mish-mash or whatever comes; they understand all the different combinations and then they see later how they are used in the performance in a much more dynamic way.

DK: Oh I see! So in other words the vocabulary is performed in the prologue.

WS: That’s right. Even with the slides, you know, the slides are showing the reference, with the ancient images.

DK: Did you focus on vases or bas-relief of theatrical productions? Were there other vases from athletic contest or something other than theatre, or did you focus on images from theatrical vases?

WS: Some images are, let’s say, very, very simple to read. You have for instance different paintings from funeral ceremonies and then you have—one of the gestures is this [he demonstrates], which means to cry, or mourning—so this is very simple, they are from the art, they are not from the theatre. But some gestures or some positions are supposedly from theatre plays. For instance, very often what you see painted is the moment of killing, when Aegistus kills Agamemnon in the presence of Clytemnestra. And then this was used and transformed, of course, because you cannot use the killing with the ax.

DK: You think that the violence would have been staged in gesture, then? Or would this be done through the messenger scene?

WS: I mean this is the same as with the reconstruction or so-called reconstruction with the music. You have annotation, but you don’t know the tempo, yes? Very often you don’t know the rhythm even, you have just annotation. And you’re taking a couple of notes and you’re adapting let’s say those notes to create a sort of musical feature. The same from the drawing. You have the composition of three, four figures which are representing, for instance, the scene of the murder, the murder of Agamemnon, and you’re taking the three or four notes, if I can say metamorph from this, but from the drawing. Not to imitate it in a very sentimental primitive way; you’re transforming it to your own advantage. So, yes, that’s how it works.

DK: So is this your first text-based piece? Obviously this is your first piece going back to an ancient text, but this is the first piece where the company is working with a preconceived text?

WS: You mean drama? Yeah, this is the first drama play. I’m usually working on novels, adapting so-called novel, epic literature. Never drama. So this is the first regular drama that is adapted [by Gardzienice].

DK: But you’re also not going to be subservient to the text, right; you’re bringing Euripides onto the stage?

WS: That’s a good question, you know, whether you’re bringing Euripides on the stage or you are bringing just an interpretation, as you would say. Because there’s a huge question of what ancient drama looked like. My trick is based on a very simple assumption, or my idea is based upon a very simple trick. I’m trying to imagine not how the play was staged in the big amphitheatre or the big auditorium, but how the play was rehearsed in the small venue. For instance, imagine: Euripides is rehearsing with his actors in his home, which is absolutely possible, or he’s rehearsing in the palastra, in the school; it is absolutely possible. There is evidence. One of the legends says that Euripides got very angry at one of the actors who wasn’t able to follow the way that Euripides himself was instructing him to do. As you know, Euripides was a composer himself. Did you know we have two musical examples, which are surely composed by Euripides? One is from Iphigenia in Aulis, the other from Orestes.

So he’s instructing the actor how to do it. This often sinks terribly into imagination, how would it be in rehearsal, you know? Euripides was the choreographer, you could say the one who was teaching all the choreography, he was surely chierosophoie, the one who teaches the chieronomia, and he was a sort of director of this. So what we know about those guys is only that they were writing a play, which is absolutely not true. So imagine them working. Then you’re completely free from all the ideas imposed by history about how you should work with the ancient drama. “You have to have a mask, you have to have the chtourni, you have to have the shirt, this particular costume,” you are more free. And as you know, the rehearsal process whenever it was happening throughout history was the most interesting process. As Stanislavsky said, “only rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal, that is important.” So I’m trying to use this idea, this perspective, and then I’m much more free for experimentation.

DK: Right. And then the classicists can’t come in and say “that’s not what it looked like in the Temple Dionysia,” because you’re not worried about that, you’re worried about rehearsal.

WS: I’m showing open rehearsal, let’s say. Something like that. Who knows how it looks? And of course I’m using costume, I’m using the mask, but in this way we’re just in the process, the work-in-process. Of course the play is complete. It is very structured. It is very precise. It goes from the beginning to the end. But still, I am free of any, let’s say, judgment. So I can say, yes, he’s Euripides—Euripides in rehearsal. Probably I should call the play that!

DK: It is being promoted as a work-in-progress, as a lecture. But you’re actually showing work-in-progress, rather than it being a work-in-progress. So, you’re piece is finished, it’s already been performed.

WS: Of course, of course. Don’t misunderstand me. It’s not like a usual contemporary work-in-progress. We can use this term for whatever but, my point of view is, don’t look at my Elektra as something that you know from history, from the books; look at it as it could be like if whoever in antiquity would rehearse.

DK: How does this engagement with ancient Greek material, in particular, this first work with the drama, how does it relate to your earlier work in myth and ritual? I understand that you did a great deal of work exploring traditional narratives and ritual forms and musical forms, especially. You’re especially well known for taking traditional musical forms and bringing them into the context of avant-garde theatre. How does this engagement with myth relate to that earlier work? Is it a completely new direction for you? Is it a continuation? Do you see it as a different phase?

WS: It is different work. Let’s say that the starting point is much more difficult. As I said there was always music in the beginning of every process. So the actors were first learning the music and then, while singing, looking to adapt the other means of expression, like the text, the movements. Then we had to create an alphabet, a code of the gestures, with this very artificial world. The music is much more social, much more natural, much more of an opening up of the organic process as one would say. It’s much more Dionysian; while the gestures, the pose, is much more Apollinian. So this would be the switch: from Dionysian to Apollinian.

DK: Meaning your previous work was much more Dionysian?

WS: Much more Dionysian, yeah. And so to create the language, which would be dynamic, which music would be able to follow, and the words would be able to follow the language of the gestures—it is very, very hard work. So it is like sculpture, sculpting the body and then trying to make a dancing sculpture. So the work is completely different, I believe.

DK: Does this Apollinian structure of gesticulation harness the Dionysian in a different way? Is there foreclosure or does it allow for a different form of ek-stasis?

WS: Well one first of all has to define exactly what ek-stasis means. What is ek-stasis? Ek-stasis is a certain state of being. An actor being in ek-stasis, or can an actor reach a certain level of dynamics, which looks so intense that it speaks to the spectator, the audience, like an ek-stasis? So it’s a question of dynamics, probably, and intensity. Performance is very dynamic, very intense, but much more refined, much more, let’s say, readable, much more clear, in terms of how the body language is used, because of the very clear precise alphabet of chieronomia, of gesticulation.

DK: Here in New York will the performance be in Polish?

WS: It’s in Polish, in English, and in ancient Greek. The main character is played by an English actress and so she’s using some English parts. The songs sung by the choir and the solo songs are sung in ancient Greek. Oh, this was good simple question. Any more like this?

DK: Yeah, I’ve got a few more simple questions. I understand you have Euripides as the narrator at certain parts of the play. I always remember being taught that…

WS: He is like the one who runs the process, who runs the rehearsal.

DK: So he’s literally running the rehearsal? Oh!

WS: He is the one who, let’s say, is being tormented. Like, he tries to find out the way how to find the proper expression, I suppose, how to find the proper climate, how to find the proper clue. So the process is his process of creation, which is not easy. So you see it is the main engine of the performance. So he’s coming in the beginning, he’s doing a sort of explanation of what they were doing before the play, before the rehearsal, the author and the director they just give an explanation to the gods, to get them as positive and as sympathetic as possible, and then he runs the show.

DK: For your company, where are the gods? Is this a concern in terms of finding a trace of the sacred in the text? Of course, Euripides is blamed by Nietzsche and others for having killed off tragedy, foreclosed the Dionysian, giving over not only to the Apollinian, but over to the Alexandrian (what Nietzsche calls the Alexandrian), so that to go to Euripides rather than the other tragedians I find very interesting and there’s this almost Socratic notion of Euripides being (again, I think of The Bacchae) as being the most cynical in relation to the gods. Are you concerned with rekindling a sacred fire? Is that a concern at all? Where are the gods in your equation? Are they hidden, have they withdrawn, are they dead?

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