The Theatre of Jerzy Grzegorzewski: Between Theatre and Non-Being

The Theatre of Jerzy Grzegorzewski Between Theatre and Non-Being Elibieta Morawiec Polish theatre, ranked among the most illustrious theatres of the West, is represented on Euro-American stages by just a few names. First came Grotowski and Kantor, somewhat behind them in greatness is Szajna, and finally comes Andrzej Wajda. Europe has heard a vague little something about the greatest of greats, Konrad Swinarski, and Vienna and the German-speaking countries are familiar with Erwin Axer, Jerzy Jarocki, Kazimierz Dejmek and even Adam Hanuszkiewicz. But who knows anything at all about Jerzy Grzegorzewski (born 1939), one of the most outstanding visionaries of the Polish stage today? Europeans will certainly be acquainted with two Frenchmen, Patrice Ch6reau and Henri Ronse, and I toss out their names to provide the imagination of the Western viewer with a style and poetics approximating those of Grzegorzewski's productions. Grzegorzewski's theatre, where the director and scene designer are one and the same person, is closely affiliated with the work of his two French contemporaries. Grzegorzewski's art, however, cannot be treated in isolation from other phenomena in Polish theatre. For this reason, I will try to sketch the artist's biography as well as try to reconstruct the consciousness and philosophy that find expression in his theatre. While belonging to the undisputed first vanguard of Polish directors, Grzegorzewski has never been a darling of the critics (with a few exceptions ). For years, Grzegorzewski has borne the label of "director-plastic artist ," which in Poland is synonymous with, at best, loose graphic associations and, at worst, with complete disregard for the thought contours of a play. Paradoxically, as a student-director in t6di (where he tried his direc75 torial mettle in a student production of Witkacy's Shoemakers), he was accused by his painter-professors of harboring "literary" interests. Grzegorzewski completed his directorial studies at the State Drama School (PWST) in Warsaw in 1968, and had already been producing plays on the professional stage as early as 1966, beginning with his graduation production of Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle at the Jaracz Theatre in todi. Grzegorzewski began his career with a group of people that were later called "the young gifted ones" (Maciej Prus, Roman Kordzinski, Izabela Cywihska). He was entering theatre at a time (the second half of the 1960s) when the dynamics of Polish theatre were undergoing reorientation. In the first half of the 1960s, the Old Theater in Cracow, which had always distinguished itself, began to lend a new tone to a theatrical life that had sunk into elegant vagueness and become a "fashion show." It was on the stage of the Cracovian Old Theater that Swinarski's first plays, The Undivine Comedy , Mr. Arden from Feversham, Fantazy, Woyzeck, appeared. Concurrently a modern repertoire was being played to audiences in the capital and elsewhere. In his Laboratorium in Wroctaw, Grotowski produced , in turn, Akropolis (with Szajna), The Constant Prince, and, in 1968 (achieving the pinnacle of his theatrical undertakings), Apocalypsis cum figuris. In conditions of such rich dramatic fare, it was not easy to make one's debut noticed. Classified with the "gifted," Grzegorzewski had less luck than, as one can see today, his less talented colleagues. Grzegorzewski's productions of Wyspianski's The Wedding (1969), Krasinski 's Irydion (1970), Chekhov's The Seagull (1971) and Genet's The Balcony (1971) went on to become quite successful throughout the country. In 1973, he began a short, but stormily concluded, period of work at the Atheneum Theatre in Warsaw. The brilliant success of Kafka's Ameryka (1973) and the XVth chapter of Ulysses (called "Bloomusalem," 1974), divided the critics into enthusiastic proponents and equally unconvinced opponents. Nevertheless , after his early successes in t6dz and then those of the two plays put on in Warsaw (The Caucasian Chalk Circle and The White Devi/), there was no doubt that an extraordinary, distinct, and, in retrospect, mature individuality had made its appearance in Polish theatre. In the middle of the 1974-75 season, three weeks before the premiere of Witkacy's Miss Tutli Putli, Grzegorzewski was deprived of both his position and job. Once again he was demoted to the status of "young boy...