THREETWOONE - REVIEWS +

If we are trying to articulate a vision of the world, and finally we have a creation which we want to show, then it doesn't really matter if it conforms to existing conventions, or if it is going to be recognised, because the language of a given performance is the only one capable of expressing this vision. Another just couldn't express it.
THREETWOONE demonstrates such a language. The setting, metamorphosed as it is, remains the same in the three parts. A number of screens are placed in a semicircle on the stage. They mark the borders of a mysterious land: the land of dreams. In the first extensive image we can see Mrs. Bergmann's Pension, whose inhabitants, apart from the heroine, seem to be three huge stuffed birds. She herself stiff in her crionline actually resembles one of the birds. Also similar to the birds is another inhabitant of the house, Mr. "O". Eccentric, pretentious, long haired; his shoe laces are always undone. He turns up out of the blue; and you don't know if he exists in reality, or only in the mind of the heroine who opens the door to the "pension" - her inner world.
Two panes hang in front of the audience to divide the theatre space into two areas. In the first small talk between the partners encompasses the daily tea ceremony. In the second is a magic space between the panes. When the actors cross the border between the areas Mrs. Bergmann metamorphoses under the spell of repeated situations and words ("I had a dream", says Mr. O). No longer stiff, the woman is put into a trance of a mad dance as if possessed by the spirit of the stuffed bird. This motif is repeated in the show, and it seems to invite the spectator to follow the ritual devised by the characters to give meaning to their existence.
In ritual the human being expresses the essence of existence. Andrzej Sadowski: Presenting ritual on stage is crucial for me; it is a very meaningful means of expression. Of course we use some ritual as "training". An example might be the Japanese tea ceremony. Each time we try to create first of all, an independent "ritual" for the show and make the actor the animator of it all. Like in the theatres of the East, the performer by himself calls into existence, both time and space, together with the characters who live within it. Andrzej Sadowski: After many performances of Broken Glass I have come to the conclusion that the archetypal situation we are creating has made it unecessary for the stuffed birds to be put in front of the audience and this has generated the magic of the show. The actors are able now to build this magic without using props. It has become necessary to show the invisible, to make the birds present on stage, without their actual presence.
Brigitte Kaufmann and Waldemar Rogojsza are to a large extent responsible for the special atmosphere of the show. Brigitte is a statue small and slender, and with a characteristic smile has an extraordinary power of expression. Waldemar is more a caricature, a bizzare buffoon. Andrzej Sadowski: I have always been looking for people who could only be themselves, who couldn't present themselves differently. Katarzyna Deszcz: We have always worked on our shows through improvisation, and that is why everybody must speak so, invent, create him or herself. Andrzej Sadowski: We want everybody to remain themselves and at the same time to feel the need to find themselves in the situation which we offer as a "framework" for the show. To let them become entranced by ritual activities. Anthropologists call it "being possessed". As the actor is such an important element of our show, we work with different people on artistic projects over and over again to test our assumptions.
This they did in the second part of the tryptich when they were joined by Mirosława Wielowiejska and Jasmin Novljaković. Whereas Broken Glass was a deep and moving reflection on the human condition, Personen in der Nacht (although equipped with pieces of plot) seems to be more an impression of the language which imagination uses to produce mythical stories. It is a language of dreams that supplements the "daily" view of the world in a subversive and demystifying way. Each of the five people who have a common dream are both himself and somebody else. A woman with a misshaped shoulder sensuosly slips off her jacket to show her perfect physique. Franz the servant sweeps the floor to produce clouds of dust as if waving incense over the witnesses: the night overturns the order of the day and destroys its logic. One of the characters mounts the sewing machine and impetously turns its wheel to evoke the image of the "sewing perpetuum mobile". Entranced by the obsessively reiterated words, "we have to get ready, we have to button the very last button" the galloping machine metamorphoses into a time machine. The metaphor is produced on the basis of the magic formula: similar attracts the similar since it is made of the similar...
The show abounds in metaphors like that. Balancing between an emotional tension and concentrated intellectual alertness, the audiences object and accuse the company of breaking the rules of reception that they are used to. Katarzyna Deszcz: Our European mentality demands definition and naming. It is different for Eastern Culture where intellectual processing is less important. Emotion is crucial. The definable gives comfort and security. We do not create such a situation. Our shows carry always a mystery, escape definitions, and that is why they are dangerous. The closer the spectators emotion is to our vision, and the closer his understanding of reality and nightmare, of harmony and disharmony of the world, then the better.
This exploration of the unconscious, this choice of props, this combination of images and references to particular art works can all be tracked back to Surrealism, which is a rich inspiration for the company. The feast of dreams which is celebrated on stage reveals the mysterious, all embracing nature of dreaming. The words of the bizzare ceremony which forms the climax to the show justifies this strange nature of dreams, "the dog (one of the incarnations of the characters) is a dream of the boy. Dust is a dream of the dog. The Book is a dream of dust. The machine is a dream of the Book".
Let us try and reveal the mysteries in the working of this "machine"- "this little box called imagination", by penetrating the process of work in a production. Andrzej Sadowski: First I invent the title, completely abstract, sentences which I like, that haunt me, i.e: "Is there no dust in the land of real snow?" or "I have fallen ill again". A need is born then to find something in yourself which responds to the signals of the sentence. For example, I get interested in the problem of suffering, the disease's which outstanding people such as Blake and Newton suffered from. So that is why it is possible for part of my show to oscillate around the situation of being ill. Later on I start writing dialogues which have nothing to do with one another and are out of context with the subject. This makes the performers add meaning to the indifferent words which seemed to have nothing in common with the reality on stage. Operating as an "external" element the actor takes the stamp of the world on himself, and speaking absurd words he tries to communicate with the world. We then are looking together for a dramatic situation, which by the reference to a mythical or archetypal pattern will express"our case". The actor struggles with a foriegn substance in which he tries to give meaning to, and I must control the results and combine them. This is the most interesting moment of work and perhaps this moment is responsible for the shape of our theatre.
The use of performance art gives much freedom to the members of the company who need no longer hide behind the directior, but devise and present the results of their work themselves. This can be seen in the last part of THREETWOONE -Association Machine. Each performer acts seperately and demonstrates his own solution using objects which have already been employed in the show. A unique symbiosis is produced: the symbiosis of human being and the object animated by him. A bird is made from the screen and a snowman-musician from a bedsheet, an abacus and a bowler-hat. In the end the actors integrate their actions and build out of all the props a kind of fantastic construction: a sculptor's prototype of the "association machine". Afterwards they strip the screens of cloth. Only the bare bones of the recent show remain. In this way the audience witness the analysis at once of the language of theatre and of MANDALA.
Is it worthwhile to study this language? I do not know. Some might consider it exhausting and unnecessary, others intriguing and important. And perhaps the directors themselves will decide to search again for still different means of expression. As long as we have "un-signed areas" somewhere of f the beaten track I will enjoy this journey. At least I will be far from the madding crowd, with a chance to consider this frustrating doubt: Is there no dust in the land of real snow..?
Elżbieta Łubieniewska (KIERUNKI / GAZETA KRAKOWSKA)