New Ancient Gestures

An Interview with Gardzienice’s Wlodzimierz Staniewski

Page II

WS: Listen, first of all this is a big question which is a big mystery, whether Euripides was religious or was he a sort of atheist. Nietzsche’s opinion was that he was a sort of a communist, I think he said, I don’t know. But the opinion of others was that he was deeply religious, and he just asked the questions, the questions of his time, Socratic questions.

DK: Socrates would only go to the theatre if it was a play by Euripides.

WS: Right. So he was the guy who was courageous enough to ask those questions: who are the gods, what are they for, and how much do we believe in them? Elektra is a really about that; they try to object, Orestes is questioning if the order he got from Apollo is proper. And then Elektra’s asking, “So, do you mean the god can be an idiot, can be stupid?” I think in the ancient language it sounds very strong. In the language those questions about the gods are like blasphemous questions. So I don’t think that he was the one who didn’t accept a so-called other reality, he was just questioning, and those questions were the questions of his time. So are the gods present in our performance? We’re not using deus ex machina but they are present somehow in the climate of the performance. You know the way actors recite, it is like an explanation, so you expect in a way that those explanations will be answered.

DK: So many attempts at the rebirth of tragedy, and I’m even thinking of the ritual theatre movement here in New York—Richard Schechner, who I know is a big fan of your work, and Andrei Serban, who is so much associated with La MaMa—that there’s this sense of a restoration of a dormant ritual form as if we can re-create the rite and then the gods will return. Is this at all a concern for you, the idea of the withdrawal of the gods, or of recovering a lost ritual or are you more interested in recovering a lost rehearsal?

WS: Yeah, you’re probably right there, but let me put it in another perspective. I mean your question is just … all right, you know, the world today is it dead or, another way, how do you say monotheistic, yes? Monotheistic. One god. What I’m saying is…

DK: Well…

WS: Wait a second. All the fundamental religions are monotheistic. I’m saying heaven for the gods. I’m supposing to believe someone is closing a curtain, the curtain is nearly closed, and there is a god in the curtain. And through this gap in a part-closed curtain we see only one god. I’m saying this because for the last two thousand years those guys who are operating the curtain, they are trying to close the stage and trying to make the [one] god much larger. Try to open the curtain a little bit more and then perhaps we’ll see the other gods who still are there, who are not necessarily dead as Nietzsche would wish. I think it was his wish, his instinctive wish; it is not necessarily true. Because I … okay, we will go the path of mysticism … that’s my clue.

DK: Well don’t be afraid of going too far into mysticism, especially if that’s what the theatre practice is engaged with. My point is, say Schechner’s Dionysus in 69, Andrei Serban’s Fragments of a Greek Trilogy, I don’t know if you’re familiar with those works…?

WS: Yeah, I’m familiar with them, yes, very well.

DK: Both of them seem to me to have been in the spirit of the gods are dead, the death of the gods, so even the notion of, you use the great image there of the curtain and it being closed so much, the idea is that the curtain is completely closed, and if we open it back up, they’ve withdrawn altogether, they’re not there on the stage anymore, and so if we put forth this rite, if we follow the trace of these ruins, perhaps the gods will come back. That seems to me to be part of the spirit of it, and that Dionysus could maybe lead them back. Is this a concern for something sacred going on, even if it is a sacred in the absence of the divine? Do you understand what I mean? Is there something sacred going on in your theatre, is that a concern?

WS: You know this is very ambiguous.

DK: Grotowski talks about the sacred actor. Is this a concern at all to you?

WS: He talks about the sacred actor but at the same time he was talking about the actor as a whore, in opposition to the sacred actor. The whore very often is a sacred figure, Mary Magdalene, so this is very ambiguous. I believe that the actor in that or another way is a sort of holy prostitute.

DK: For you?

WS: For me, yes. So through what he or she sacrifices, how much is god or are the gods are taking part? However, anything which is beyond our mind is taking part. You know there are two kinds of dialogue, dialogue in between two persons, as we are talking, and dialogue with ourselves. We are in permanent dialogue with ourselves. Who the hell is inside of us, who is the second? Who is the double that speaks all the time? I believe this is sort of the structure which can be related to something which is beyond the mind. I am very delicately walking around the issue, because I don’t want religious terms, I don’t want to be qualified on religious grounds. When we are saying “the gods” we are using a certain idea of something god is, let’s say as today, it is the supernatural. And look what happens with this modern belief with technology and so on, this incredible reinvention of something which is the supernatural. So we have our matrix or we have our gods, or we have gods, two different terms; maybe it’s a question of terminology.

DK: I guess, I’m wondering if Gardzienice is in some way…

WS: A sect? A religious sect?

DK: Yeah.

WS: No, no, no, no, no. What I believe in the process of working theatre is something more than only a way of manipulating people, subjects, space, and so on. Yes, I do believe. So if you would push me and say “okay, so declare in one word what belief your belief is about,” I would say it clear: I believe in miracle. You’re working very hard, you’re reaching your limits, your extremes in the world, because that’s what real work is about, all kinds of artistic work, and suddenly you’re touching something that is revelatory, comes without any pre-conception, and unexpectedly, blows you away. So where it came from, I say, from somewhere; and so and so on, where is the somewhere, where is the somewhere? A good word: somewhere. Somewhere. It’s like eternity, heaven, it’s like…okay…that is very shaky ground. I wouldn’t be qualified, I wouldn’t like to be qualified as a religious theatre, a religious thing. Because we’ve been very open, particularly with our earlier shows, like Avvakum, you know, “okay they must be dealing with religion all those Poles, you know who are overwhelmed, who are a company absolutely absorbed with the religious stuff” and so on…

DK: That’s why I ask because there’s that association with your company, and again from New York, Gardzienice might be thrown into this category with Grotowski, and so I’m trying to understand how they relate, how your work relates and how it doesn’t relate…

WS: To Grotowski?

DK: Yeah, to Grotowski and again that notion of the sacred actor, and the way in which you’ve pursued mythical materials, ritual materials, and the way in which you incorporate music so much, it seems like there’s something sacred going on, but I appreciate your…

WS: Listen, my notion is like this: is art about something what we call, what we used to call metaphysical? I would say yes. Metaphysical, beyond the physical. Is metaphysics possible without the physics? I would say no. So the moment of transformation is like a sort of a chemical process. You put the different physical ingredients and then suddenly you have, believe it or not, the miracle, the revelation, something which is completely beyond your physical perceiving. The word, the process, is there. So that is how I would put it.

DK: One thing that’s obviously very different from your work, say with the other environmental or ritual theatre forms, is your use of multimedia, and I was curious to hear more about how you use slide projections and animation in this piece.

WS: You know, I will say something that doesn’t support very much my way of doing P.R., propaganda for our art. I am very much for this type of art which has the didactic attitude. But didacticism doesn’t work very well with the real artistic big-bang. That’s why I’m so careful. Maybe if you were doing a theatre show and it works, it has to smuggle, like smuggling with drugs, a certain didactics. Not offensive, not trying to impose on you, “I know something; I am going to tell you something.” That’s why I’m using the multimedia because to show multimedia, it has to be very well integrated into the process of acting, so multimedia can say some of the things which are not necessarily commonly known but should be. For instance, I’m using slides, and in the last performance in Elektra there is a very short animation film to tell that with my way of reinventing chieronomia I’m not improvising, I’m not doing whatever, but I’m returning in reference to a certain knowledge, certain technique, certain methodology which existed in antiquity. So listen, there was something like chieronomia; look at this picture, and look how it was drawn out, how it was inspired, and now we’re doing a rock-n-roll adaptation which is, today, contemporary—we fix today part of the dynamic, the organics. So, this message is the didactic moment; you’re revealing or you’re saying something to the public which is forgotten, but which should be told. Like chieronomia, like all the ancient music. I was showing documentation, I was showing ancient Greek notation on the slides. This is very, very unknown, and very forgotten.

DK: But it’s not didactic in a sense of imparting a moral lesson.

WS: Exactly what I said. It’s not like I am a teacher and you are the tool. No, I just want to have a look at it and just put it in light, a certain interesting sensitive fact, very spirited for the larger perspective, not only Gardzienice, but for a larger amount of people, for the larger number of researchers and the larger amount of artists. Just have a look at it…

DK: Is this why the piece is subtitled “an essay”?

WS: Yeah. Exactly.

DK: I’m curious how do you see Gardzienice in relation to say, and again I hate to emphasize this nationalist query too much but, how do you see Gardzienice in relation to say Grotowski or Kantor, are you in relation to them or are you in relation to other international avant-gardists in a different way?

WS: You know I am very declared Meyerholdic, in Russian they say Meyerholdhic, one who is Meyerhold follower. Very, very declared. His work on biomechanics, his work on antiquity again, not very known.

DK: So biomechanics and gesticulation…

WS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but his work was one of the most important in twentieth century theatre, for twentieth century theatre. We are not yet twenty-first century theatre, so we can still say twentieth-century theatre. But I’ve been wary, as I have worked with Grotowski. Maybe because of that I had this desperation to oppose him. Now when I read him and I can see him in the large picture, I can say that he was a very influential and important person for international theatre, why not for Polish as well?

DK: Are you concerned with national character or anything?

WS: Like what?

DK: Do you conceive of yourself, or Gardzienice, as a Polish company?

WS: No, it was always international. Always fifty, sometimes forty percent of actors hail from other countries.

DK: Do you see your work in relation to Eugenio Barba, the theatre anthropology approach of Odin Teatret?

WS: I respect Eugenio Barba. I’m in antiquity. I believe that antiquity is still the source of inspiration. I would say I’m more in theatre archaeology than anthropology. Of course I respect his work. I think he is much more working on so-called ethnic stuff, ethnodrama.

DK: Have you shifted from ethnography to archaeology then in your own work? Wasn’t your earlier work more anthropological?

WS: That’s how we’ve been received or how we’ve been described, but it was always a sort of archaeology. You know you’re digging in the earth and you’re trying to find out where are the bones of your fathers and grandfathers and great-grand-grandfathers, and then you go to Mediterranean culture because this is the one of our real cultural sources.

DK: The reason I ask is I know that Barba did some work in terms Kathakali gesture, and I wondered how that might compare to your archeology of gesticulation, but as you’re describing it, it sounds quite different.

WS: You tell. You will see the performance. You will see how much it is similar. Why not compare it to Kathakali itself? But of course those guys, those people are no doubt very inspiring for today’s theatre.

DK: Do you see your work then as in some way modern or postmodern but then also with another foot in antiquity? How do you see your work in relation to time, temporality in the present moment, in terms of Elektra? Why Elektra now?

WS: Oh, for a very simple reason. I’ll tell you why. There is of course a couple of other reasons, but I’ll give you only one. You know what I did in this performance or in my hook of this performance was not only chieronomia, which is a sort of the company’s new invention; anyway, every theatre is based upon or using in some other way gestures, gesticulation, pantomime more or less through time, but I don’t think a theatre has gone so far researching how this technique functioned in antiquity.

So despite that, the other hook was Elektra, all the issues concerning her, her desperation, her not-to-be-stopped force to destroy, to kill, to damage; all the issues of destruction, of killing, of let’s say demonic power which lies inside of us somewhere. Probably in relation, when we say with demons, we say with the gods. Who are the gods? They are there. Who [ever] the gods are, they are there. All of these issues are very contemporary, very today. So she was stopped several times during the play not to proceed - with this fatal demand coming. The question is where does this come from, this urge to kill? Actually the main explanation in the play itself is: kill, kill, kill, kill. All the time it is all the killing, an obsession with the kill. As you know Euripides was the Dostoevsky of his time; in other words, he was the first one who went very into the character’s psychology. Especially he was penetrating, obsessive with women’s psychology. And this is very contemporary. Of course, my analysis on this issue is a bit dangerous because some people could say he’s the same, like Euripides, a misogynist.

DK: Thesmaphoriazusae, right…

WS: Woman is the real source of fatal destructiveness. I’m not necessarily telling you this but I’m very struck by the mysterious world of womanhood. Yeah, okay, no more about it. The point is the hook is in the play, which I believe I found, and I believe that Elektra, I did a sort of prejudgment as it is called in the theatre of interpretation. The main thing is that Elektra was raped by Aegisthus as a child and all the consequences of this act are running through the performance. And today it is a very hot issue, like Ophelia, children being raped and so on. So there’s the hook.

DK: That’s not Euripides’ hook.

WS: This is to be discussed. You take your peg and I’ll take mine. Let’s take your translation. You know that translation does not necessarily reflect the real thoughts of the author. Every translation is not so much reflecting the original author but is reflecting the epoch, the given epoch when the translation is done. Why? For a very clear reason. You are enslaved by a lot of topics using the language which is the contemporary language of your time, using the references which would make the play, give it life today. All this is just making the play whatever and it doesn’t reflect necessarily what the author wants to say. More [so] the ancient language; ancient Greek language is sort of an enigma still. You can make many different interpretations of not just a given sentence, but sometimes even a word. The metaphors are incredible, giving multiple interpretations. So I would say, this issue whether she was raped by Aegisthus or not is to be discussed between you and me. You take your translation and I’ll take mine and we can argue. It is somehow I believe hidden in the text—I’m suggesting it is.

DK: And in some ways it’s these new ancient gestures…

WS: “New ancient gestures,” I like it. You know, my other term that I used in the very beginning was looking for a new natural theatre environment. So, new ancient gestures, very good.

For more information on Gardzienice, see http://www.gardzienice.art.pl/.

© David Kilpatrick and The Nietzsche Circle, 2008

(published in Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics, a web publication of The Nietzsche Circle: www.nietzschecircle.com, April 2008)

To download the entire essay, Open PDF: | “New Ancient Gestures”

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