Vibration, Rhythm, and Temperature

NINA KIRALY In my opinion you are one of the few directors able to transform concrete detail into symbol, without falling into flat allegory. Building on contemporary plays that require special expressive tools, you have created your own authorial stage language.

ANNA AUGUSTYNOWICZ I'm glad my theater is considered to have its own language, but I try not to cultivate it self-consciously. Every approach to a new drama means a meeting with a new person, with a new language. Based on what is coded in the rhythm of the characters and roles, I try, with the ensemble, to reveal what is hidden in people. Maybe reading with the same group of performers gives the impression that it's possible to define my language; I have worked with the same actors for a long period rather successfully, the actors of the Modern Theater. They constantly inspire me, and that is the only reason I am capable of giving them something back. There must be an exchange of energy; if this happens, we don't bore each other. The artistic work must be a pleasure, joyful, and this is realized in our company, so I haven't lost the feeling of attractiveness in my work with them. I consider our group different from the others. It's like playing music with an orchestra or football with a team; you must master playing, so we study all the time.

What about what you call "auto-irony" in your poetics? Sometimes I see this distance, auto-irony, in connection with Witkacy's poetics. Do you see Witkacy's dramaturgy as a source? My question is connected with the continuing popularity of Witkacy's model in Polish theater, in interpretations by Krystian Lupa, Grzegorz Jarzyna, and Zbigniew Brzoza. Do you have a personal relationship with his plays?

I staged two of his plays: Bellatrix and In a Small Countryhouse. Both required different approaches, but I didn't feel provoked by him. If I must name an author from whom I draw in my theater work, it would be Gombrowicz and his questioning of certain forms of everyday life and forms of language in stage interpretation. I staged his play Ivona twice.

You work mainly with contemporary Polish and foreign dramas. How do you handle these untraditional texts?

I begin with an exploration of the text. I don't go to the stage until the text is settled within the ensemble to such an extent that we forget it and think naturally in the energy and thoughts of the characters, so we don't become the heroes of the text or somehow merely imitate their emotional state. Later it's necessary to omit the text as a working tool to help the actors. But the essence of playing is fight; we must conquer an event, which is happening, which must be presented. We try to defend it strictly, and we move to the stage after the text is learned and can be omitted so we can construct events.

Do you have your own vision of the production from the beginning, or do you clarify it while working with the scenographer?

Generally I have some inner impulse that allows me to...