Brad Spurgeon's Blog

MICHALOWICE, Poland — When the nearly two-hour long drive from the Wroclaw airport to Michalowice ended, it was around 1am, raining, and about as much of “a dark and stormy night” as you could imagine. I had seen practically nothing the whole trip from the rear seats in the van that I shared with the three actors of TAC Teatro for the entire trip, as Ornella kept the driver awake with conversation in the front seats. And when we then descended the stone stairs toward the 16th century home with me dragging two shows worth of costumes and props through the muddy puddles and tree leaves, I had a feeling of foreboding about the kind of next for days we were going to be spending in this mountain retreat not far from the Czech border.

I could never have imagined that we were entering into a historic seat of the third theater in comfortable living conditions, a charmingly furnished and inhabited mansion with warm and generous hosts and several other occupants in the creative industries. After my initial relief at finding ourselves housed in a first-floor, private apartment in the old predominantly wood and stone building, my next feeling of reassurance came as I realized that the name Teatr Cinema did not mean that the work and performance room resembled a cinema in any way at all. We had just arrived at the soon to be 35-year-old bastion and home base of one of Poland’s leading avant garde theater companies, led by the husband and wife couple of Zbigniew Szumski and Katarzyna Rotkiewicz-Szumska.

Ornella had arranged an exchange visit with the theater company many months before, offering to put on a workshop, a performance of TAC’s play, Tomorrow’s Forgotten Ones, as well as contributing to the latest production and performance of Teatr Cinema. What followed was a fabulous coming together of two different generations of theater companies navigating, nevertheless, in a similar world – that of the third theater – and here with the special added aspect of it taking place so near one of the birthplaces of this kind of theater, that of where the famous Jerzy Grotowski first set about building his theatrical worlds in the early 1960s.

For me, personally, this trip was vibrant and inspiring in more deeper ways than can really be imagined, as it was the first time I ever went to Poland, a country that I learned only a handful of years ago was the birthplace of my grandmother, mother of my adopted mother. So it was a near week of discovery on just about every level.

To start with, of course, were the worlss of Zbigniew Szumski and Katarzyna Rotkiewicz-Szumska. Both are trained visual artists who decided to turn to theater. Their dream became reality after the communist collapse of the country led to multiple upheavals both good and bad, but ultimately, for them meant that they were able to buy this sprawling, several hundred square meter mountain dwelling that had most recently been a holiday home for families under the communist government. They bought it in 1991 and starting in 1992, they had transformed it into the home for their new theater company.

As with the man who coined the term “third theater,” Eugenio Barba (who turned 90 on 29 Oct.), and his famous Odin Teatret, this couple has managed to hold on to the same group of actors for nearly 35 years now. Unlike Odin, the group of four actors in addition to the director and his wife, only meet to stage their ongoing and longstanding productions. That is less and less often, from what I understand, but in their heyday, they were traveling the world to perform their special brand of creative theater, that is often a mix of mediums that includes, yes, mixing cinema with theater.

Tomorrow’s Forgotten Ones by TAC Teatro

Of the three main goals of the week, the two high points were definitely the performance of Tomorrow’s Forgotten Ones by the TAC company, and the creation and performance of the final show by Teatr Cinema, with the participation of TAC’s actors, Mila Wood, Larissa Guist, and Giacomo La Rosa. While I was occupied doing several other things – including profiting by simply living in and discovering the huge ancient house – the actors underwent a several days long initiation into the directorial techniques of this pillar of Polish alternative theater that is Zbigniew Szumski. His work contrasted so much to that of Ornella Bonventre’s at TAC Teatro We all came out of it richer in our understanding of the possibilities of the actor’s potentials.

The workroom was a long rectangular ground floor room with plenty of windows facing out to the surrounding mountains of this wood-heated cabin-like structure. It was full of Persian carpets on top of the classic dance floor surface, fireplaces – including one often in use during the work periods – and fine stuffed old armchairs. The whole was punctuated by the regular presence of the mid-sized household dog, who has one of the strongest personalities of any canine I have ever seen, but the peculiar trait – for a dog of the theater – of barking any time anyone clapped their hands…even a single clap by a single person!

We spent some hours preparing the space for the performance of Tomorrow’s Forgotten Ones, and once it was done, it felt like one of the best setting we have ever had for the piece. We performed it in the so-called “river” set up, with the spectators sitting either side of the central runway where the show took place. What made this a beautiful rich performance beyond the nature of the room, with its fairly low-slung, wood-beamed ceilings, was that most of the spectators came from the surrounding houses and countryside, and were like one big family at the the Teatr Cinema.

ZOSTANIE PO MNIE PUSTY POKÓJ

After the full four days preparation for the final show of the Teatre Cinema, our actors just shined upon the stage in the same room (now with a frontal performance) in what I think must be a classic style of Zbigniew Szumski combining a film, the actors’ movements in front of the screen throughout, and intervention from Zbigniew Szumski himself off to the side and giving orders to the actors. Entitled, “ZOSTANIE PO MNIE PUSTY POKÓJ” (An empty room will be left after me, would be a rough translation.), I would be able to provide a much better description of what it was about were I able to understand the Polish that was spoken during the performance in the many interviews and narration of the films. One thing was sure: I felt very much as if I was living a true theater experience of the 1970s or 1980s, but with a feel of the present undeniable reigning throughout.

Another high point of the week was the dinner that they offered after TAC’s performance, where we remained at the table for a couple of hours discussing Zbigniew Szumski and Katarzyna Rotkiewicz-Szumska approaches to art and theater, and where they met with the ideas of Ornella and her TAC Teatro. In the small world department, I was quite surprised when during that same evening I learned that among the many portraits that Katarzyna has painted over the years, was that – from a photo – of one of my childhood heroes in Canada, the scar-faced hockey player, Terry Sawchuk!

On the final evening, at our late-night talk at the cavernous kitchen’s long table – made from an old door that Zbigniew found and converted into its present form – we were joined by another young generation actor from Wroclaw, Przemysław Furdak, who not only has extensive credits in film and TV, but above all, is a founding member of another theater company in Wroclaw, called Uklad Formalny, that has existed now for almost a decade, and while it is not apparently leading a new avant garde wave like Teatr Cinema, is bringing a new generation of independent theater into the mix with a group of devoted and enthusiastic young actors. And we look forward to seeing one of their productions in a future trip to the land of my grandmother! For it goes without saying that any reticence that I had upon arriving last Sunday evening at the Teatre Cinema, was replaced five days later with even a melancholy feeling at the prospect of leaving this creative oasis in the mountains near the Czech Republic border.