Since Grotowski’s death, there have been a number of attempts in Poland to stage Akropolis, either Wyspiański’s or Grotowski’s version. In April 2001 Akropolis was revived at Teatr narodowy under the direction of Ryszard Peryt (set design by ewa Starowieyska), who is better known as an opera director than a theatre director. Peryt’s production was not successful.612 It stressed the national and religious character of the play while adding one more character from another Wyspiański play, Wyzwolenie [Liberation]. Konrad, a hapless, Polish Romantic hero who turns into Hector, Jacob and King david, contains in himself all of the major characters, thus unifying the plot structure of the play.
Wyspiański took Konrad originally from Mickiewicz’s Forefathers’ Eve, a Polish Romantic drama with undertones of the Hamletian dilemma of action versus inaction. Roman Pawłowski, writing in Gazeta Wyborcza, mocked Peryt’s choice as an unfortunate attempt to reframe the national liberatory theology in a new european context (“Poland, the Christ of the nations, becomes Poland the europe of the nations”), thus replicating the closed-minded pathos of the national–religious eschatology – something that, Pawłowski notes, both Wyspiański and Grotowski luckily escaped.613 “The difference between Wyspiański’s work and Peryt’s,” Pawłowski wrote, “is like the difference between the Bible and its radio talk-show interpretation.”614 He added:
Peryt does not look for contradictions in Wyspiański’s work; he is not interested in the dialectic of apotheosis and mockery on which Grotowski [built] his spectacle. The drama which was an attempt to sum up the european civilization in one tradition of antiquity, Judaism and Christianity, in Peryt’s version becomes reduced to Polish Catholicism, a mistaken belief that all highest european values come from Poles.615 What you get is a theatre of the pseudo-absurd: “Peryt’s spectacle claims that Troy was defended by Poles, only Homer forgot to mention it in his Iliad. Our man was also in the Bible; he even gave rise to one of Israel’s tribes. One thing I don’t understand, though, is why our hero, in the third act, like the biblical Jacob has two wives. And how does bigamy relate to proper Catholicism?”616 Mockingly, Pawłowski added: “If Wyspiański’s Akropolis was an attempt to bring Polish culture out of its restricted locality into the broader paradigm of european civilization, Peryt’s version brings it back to its restricted national roots.”617
In 2004, in the USA, the Wooster Group mounted a show, The Poor Theatre: a series of simulacra, meant as a tribute and a postmodern reenactment of Freedman’s film of Grotowski’s Akropolis. The performance consisted of members of the Wooster Group
reenacting the movements of Grotowski’s actors, as captured by Freedman’s film, which ran in the background. The Poor Theatre premiered in Warsaw to mixed reviews. Some regarded it as a “faded copy,” and others as a “new look at Grotowski.”618 Schechner called it an “enactment of absence,” writing: “Poor Theatre is all about death – death of artists in and close to the Performance Group and Wooster Group […] and the death of the avant-garde itself.”619 Poor Theatre makes no allusion to Holocaust, a decision which Joanna Wichowska called a “respect for trauma, which the Wooster Group cannot claim to understand.”620 Joanna Targoń noted that the Wooster Group’s enactment is meant to be a parody, a form of letting go of one’s past, no matter how sacred.
Targón writes that, in The Poor Theatre, “the morbid piety and pathetic seriousness of Grotowski’s disciples becomes an object of mockery, a mockery which is foremost aimed at the Wooster Group members themselves.”621
In 2009, another adaptation of Akropolis was mounted in the Wrocławski Teatr Współczesny [Modern Theatre] under the direction of the Greek director Michael Marmarinos. Titled Akropolis. Reconstrukcja [Akropolis Reconstruction], the show opened on 11 december. The music was composed by Piotr dziukeb, the set designed by dominika Skaza, and the choreography arranged by Leszek Bzdyl. The show’s aim was to combine Wyspiański’s text with Grotowski’s version of Akropolis. Marmarinos once again asked a question about the Polish Akropolis: what, and where, is it now?
The interesting fact, however, is that he doesn’t speak Polish; thus, his interpretation of Poland, and hence the Polish Akropolis, was that of an outsider. Marmarinos was attracted to the play because of his fascination with the “Polish soul,” as he called it, the cultural and contextual complexity of Polish national identity:
The structure of the Polish soul speaks to me. I like your way of dramatizing everything.
And I like the fact that it is often a source of your problems. I like that, because it gives you a depth, an understanding of the essence of things. It also pushes you towards a very specific sense of humor, which is also very interesting. you can also see all of the contradictory forces that were at play in making the Polish soul so complex. I refer here to both the historical context and your geographic location between the two mythical powers – Russia and Germany.622
The press release described the spectacle as a
unique experiment, attempting to erect a theatrical museum of our common historical memory. A museum for the twenty-first century, in which the spectator is provoked by all means available, to make a judgment as to what he sees and why he sees it in the order in which he sees it. The Greek director and Polish actors, like a group of tourists, invite their audience on a journey in search of the Polish Akropolis. This uncommon visit to the Akropolis focuses on linguistic signs but also on colors, shapes and sounds.
Wyspiański’s texts (from 1904) and Grotowski’s spectacle (from 1962) function as tour guides. How does their experience relate to ours? We have to find out. The spectacle is not only an attempt to reconstruct “the highest place in the city-state” (such is the etymological meaning of the word “akropolis”), but foremost an attempt to define it
once again. It is an attempt to figure out what mechanisms rule our national memory and to reconstruct our national identity – group and individual diagnosis at the end of the year 2009.623
The first act is a staging of Wyspiański’s first act: the monuments come to life. In the second act, the actors replay Grotowski’s spectacle based on archival slides, projected in the background. The actors literally replicate the movements of Grotowski’s actors and the fiddler plays the same song as in Grotowski’s version. Marmarinos moves the second act of Wyspiański’s text to the end, thus also replicating Grotowski’s structure.624 Marmarinos, however, adds additional text, his own humorous anecdotes, and other elements.625 He said about the production: “We approach what they [Grotowski’s actors] have done as a historical accomplishment. We take a certain form; let’s say, we take a picture, which captures a certain moment in time, and try to return to the source of its origins to discover something deeper.”626 The production’s motif was water; the set contained a pool of water, and the show opened with actors coming out of the pool.
The pool was “a symbol of all cultural contexts, in which a person is submerged his whole life. The program notes also contained a short blurb: “The body of a man with the weight of 70 kg has about 45 liters of water. If he were to lose 1.5 liters a day, he would die in six days.” Thus, Marmarinos seems to suggest that a man without cultural baggage, like a man without water, is doomed to disappear.627
The project received mixed reviews. Krzysztof Kucharski called it a “group creation reminiscent of hippie communes.”628 Kucharski also asked a rhetorical question about the contemporary relevance of such explorations: “does anyone ever wonder about which place in Poland is the most important for him/her?”629 Reflecting popular perception of Wyspiański’s dramas as being passé, Leszek Pułka humorously noted:
“My son said that if he ever wanted to punish his children, he would have them watch Wyspiański’s The Wedding.” Pułka then asked, “Is the return to Akropolis a return to something we haven’t been missing at all?”630 Critics were also ambivalent about the spectacle’s relationship to Grotowski’s production. Wojciech Sitarz flatly stated that “At the present moment, it is impossible to stage Akropolis and not to have it compared with Grotowski’s production, which is widely acknowledged as groundbreaking.”631 Sitarz continued: “It is difficult to say who is more important for Marmarinos, Grotowski or Wyspiański. But it is not important to make this decision. Marmarinos clearly showed us that you can’t treat our cultural heritage in a vacuum, because it forms us, even if we don’t realize it.”632 Joanna Targoń sadly concluded that Marmarinos’ spectacle is
“like a spiritualistic seance that fails from the get-go because it assumes that bringing up the very ghosts it’s trying to bring up is an impossible endeavor.”633 Marmarinos himself said: “I ask myself one question – what is Akropolis for Poles today? I think there is only one answer – Akropolis is Grotowski. Just like Acropolis is an important place for european history, Grotowski’s Akropolis is an important point for the history of european Theatre.”634 Joanna derkaczew liked the connection to Grotowski: “The spectacle is an attempt to bring fresh new perspective to Grotowski’s work. If this is the strategy for modern artists tackling his legacy, there is a chance that Grotowski will cease being a museum piece with a ‘don’t touch’ sign.”635 On the other hand, Katarzyna
Kamińska wrote that “The reconstruction never happens. The dialogue with Grotowski is unclear. Marmarinos makes a number of references to Grotowski’s production, but the references do not comment on or bring anything new to Laboratory’s version of Akropolis.”636
Wyspiański’s Akropolis has always been notoriously difficult to stage. By all accounts, the most recent attempts have failed to some degree to capture Wyspiański’s monumental, syncretic vision. What is, however, interesting in all these attempts is that they engage not just Wyspiański’s text, but also Grotowski’s. In a way, following Grotowski’s production of Akropolis, it became impossible to stage Wyspiański’s version without at least acknowledging Grotowski’s. Translated through the trauma of Auschwitz, Wyspiański’s text as a cultural object has been deflected by Grotowski’s performance. Interpretation of Wyspiański’s Akropolis can no longer exist independent of Grotowski’s interpretation; its meaning has been permanently altered.
building the crematorium. Courtesy of The Grotowski Institute.
Figure 2. Auschwitz crematorium. 2010. Photo by Bill Huston. Courtesy of the photo author.
building the crematorium. Courtesy of The Grotowski Institute.
Figure 4. Auschwitz crematorium. 2010. Photo by Bill Huston. Courtesy of the photo author.
building the crematorium. Courtesy of The Grotowski Institute.
Figure 6. Akropolis, 1963, dir. Jerzy Grotowski, set design by Józef Szajna – The prisoners building the crematorium. Courtesy of The Grotowski Institute.
Figure 7. Characteristic dead face of the Muselmann, with expressive, shiny eyes.
Photo reprinted from André Leroy and Maximilian Attila, Le deportation (Paris:
Le Patriote Résistant, 1968), inside cover.
Author of the photograph unknown.
1963. Akropolis, dir. Jerzy Grotowski, set design by Józef Szajna. Courtesy of The Grotowski Institute.
Figure 9. Actors’ masks for Akropolis, 1963. Akropolis, dir. Jerzy Grotowski, set design by Józef Szajna. Courtesy of The Grotowski Institute.
Figure 10. Akropolis, 1963, dir. Jerzy Grotowski, set design by Józef Szajna. PBL Episode 207: Polish Lab Theater (1969).
Courtesy of WNET.
207: Polish Lab Theater (1969). Courtesy of WNET.
Figure 12. A cart laden with the bodies of prisoners. Saturday, 5 May 1945–Saturday, 12 May 1945. Gusen, [Upper Austria] Austria. Photo by Sam Gilbert. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park Time/Life Syndication United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Courtesy of Bud Tullin, Harold Royall and Stephen Adalman.
1945–Thursday, 10 May 1945. Gusen, [Upper Austria] Austria. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Courtesy of Eugene S. Cohen.
Figure 14. Akropolis, 1963, dir. Jerzy Grotowski, set design by Józef Szajna. PBL Episode 207: Polish Lab Theater (1969). Courtesy of WNET.
1945. Mauthausen, [Upper Austria] Austria. Photo by Donald Dean. Courtesy of Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota.
Figure 16. I Shall Never Return, 1988, dir. Tadeusz Kantor. Photo by Tommaso Lepera.
Courtesy of the photo author.
Figure 18. Corpses at Auschwitz concentration camp. Courtesy of the Holocaust Research Project. <www.holocaustresearchproject.org>
concentration camp. Saturday, 5 May 1945–Saturday, 12 May 1945. Gusen, [Upper Austria]
Austria. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Courtesy of Benjamin Ferencz.
5 May 1945–Saturday, 10 May 1945. Gusen, [Upper Austria] Austria. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Courtesy of Benjamin Ferencz.
Figure 20. I Shall Never Return, 1988, dir. Tadeusz Kantor. Photo by Tommaso Lepera.
Courtesy of the photo author.
Figure 22. Auschwitz, pile of suitcases left by the victims. Courtesy of Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum.
of Master Veit Stoss: Barricade. Photo by Witold Górka. Courtesy of Dorota Krakowska and Cricoteka.
Figure 24. Auschwitz, pile of suitcases left by the victims. Courtesy of Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum.
and Cricoteka, Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor.
Figure 26. Tadeusz Kantor’s Artist Wanderer. Photo by Konrad Pollesch. Courtesy of the photo author.
and Wincenty Smokowski, Obrazy Starodawne [Pictures from Olden Days] (Warsaw: G.
Sennewald, 1843), 108.
Figure 28. Kurka wodna (The Water Hen; 1967). Photo by Jacek Stoklosa. Courtesy of the photo author.
photo author.
Figure 30. Prisoners arriving at Auschwitz concentration camp. Courtesy of Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum.
Courtesy of Dorota Krakowska, and Cricoteka, Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor.
Figure 32. Prisoners arriving at Auschwitz concentration camp. Courtesy of Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum.
Birkenau Museum.
Figure 34. Costume for Absent Old Man. Dead Class, 1975. Photo by Piotr Oleś. Courtesy of the photo author.
Birkenau Museum.
People as Coats on the Hangers. Courtesy of Dorota Krakowska and Cricoteka, Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor.
Figure 37. Dainty Shapes and Hairy Apes, 1973, dir. Tadeusz Kantor. Sketch. Coatroom and 40 Mendelbaums. Courtesy of Dorota Krakowska, and Cricoteka, Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor.
“Tadeusz Kantor od Małego dworku do Umarłej klasy” [Tadeusz Kantor: From The Country House to Dead Class], 2010. Photo by W. Rogowicz. Courtesy of the National Museum in Wrocław.
Figure 39. Bruno Schulz, “The Old Age Pensioner [Self-Portrait] and the Boys on the Bench.” Dated before 1937. By permission of Marek Podstolski. Courtesy of the Museum of Literature, Warsaw.
1937. By permission of Marek Podstolski. Courtesy of the Museum of Literature, Warsaw.
Figure 41. Dead Class, 1975, dir. Tadeusz Kantor. Photo by Andrzej Lojko. Courtesy of the photo author.
permission of Marek Podstolski. Courtesy of the Museum of Literature, Warsaw.
by Janusz Podlecki. Courtesy of the photo author.
Figure 43.Dead Class, 1975. Exhibit “Tadeusz Kantor od Małego dworku do Umarłej klasy” [Tadeusz Kantor: From The Country House to Class], 2010. Photo by W. Rogowicz. Courtesy of the National Museum in Wrocław.
Figure 45. Senator Alben W. Barkley of Kentucky, a member of a congressional committee investigating Nazi atrocities, views the evidence firsthand at Buchenwald concentration camp. Weimar, Germany, 24 April 1945. Department of Defense. Department of the Army.
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. 18 September 1947. (Online version available through Archival Research Catalog (NAIL Control Number: NRE-338-FTL(EF)-3134(2)) at <http://arcweb.
archives.gov/>. Accessed 1 August 2011.)
Sienkiewicz, Łodź, Festiwalu Dialogu Czterech Kultur, 2008. Photo by Grzegorz Michałowicz. Courtesy of Polska Agencja Prasowa (PAP).
Figure 47. Objects left by the victims who died in the gas chambers. Auschwitz Museum exhibit. Photo by Bill Huston. Courtesy of the photo author.
exhibit. Photo by Bill Huston. Courtesy of the photo author.
Figure 49. Wielopole, Wielopole, 1980, dir. Tadeusz Kantor. Photo by Andrzej Lojko.
Courtesy of the photo author.
Leah’s Wedding. In the middle, as the Bride: Shoshana Avivit, who preceded Hanna Rovina in the part. Reprinted with permission of IDCPA, Tel-Aviv University and Habima Theatre.