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Joanna Ruszczyk (...) The new performance Iphigenia at Aulis according to Eurypides showed at The National Old Theatre in Krakow (Teatr Stary) is yet another successful attempt of stripping the antiquity of museum characteristics. The glass of the showcase behind which the present time put the antiquity has been broken. (...) The world of lost, mentally and phisically crippled characters fascinates us, but at the same time fills us with fear. We start to realize that it is not only the story taken from a theatre antique shop and told with beautiful music by Zygmunt Konieczny but a story about the present time. It is how Staniewski resurects the antiquty. (...) Gardzienice's performances represent theatre of the highest artistic risk. Staniewski looks in his actors and the text for traces of Dionystic rituals from which the ancient drama was born. He shifts the footbridge between the mith, symbol and banal, vulgar everyday life.
Anna R. Burzuńska (...) Iphigenia is just being born, however, it already deserves to be called valuable performance. For Włodzimierz Staniewski the journey, aspiration and searching seem more important than reaching the goal: he has been leading a research of ancient Greek music, dance and gesture - art of cheironomia at the Academy of Theatre Practice for over a decade. The following performances are at the same time a part of the research and a difficult test verifying the effects. It's only when the artists get together with the audience (particularly the audience from the outside of the classic philology and theatre circles) it shows if reconstructed remaining fragments of music notations thanks to solicitous and almost archeological study or recreated gestures from vase paintings can move the audience. Watching the following performances, you can see for yourself if the ensemble has indeed succeeded in reaching the foundations of the European culture, universal signs and unchangeable emotions. (.) the current economical shape of the performance works as an advantage. It is the unity of the new Gardzienice's performance that hits us while watching the work in progress. The roles of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra and Achilles are strongly and clearly sketched. The relations between them are sharpened and based on extreme emotions. Iphigenia whose inconsequently drown, somehow "divided" character has caused some reservations in the world of researchers for centuries appears as two characters: delicate, exalted and ill girl (who with the awkward dance expresses her believe in idealized love and with the pathetic singing announcing her will to be sacrificed for the country) and her sound and pragmatic twin-sister who prefers to live ever so miserably than die in glory (trans. by Ch. R. Walker). The subject of sacrifice the act of sacrifice, the hierarchy of individual and national values becomes more important than the life plot of the Mycenaean King's daughter. The tragedy's conflicts are placed on a knife's blade. Extraordinary energy of the actors orders us to observe with tension their struggles over life and death. (.) Clytemnestra's desperate question if anybody at last is going to face against human sacrifice in the name of God or humanity and private or political interests cuts the action at culminating moment.
Łukasz Drewniak The not-yet-ready performances of Gardzienice have fascinated me for years. They are levitating between a lecture, an essay and a rehearsal. The performances' sketched character symbolizes our incomplete knowledge on the antiquity, presumptions, forebodings and hypothesis. For Gardzienice the lack of it is the wholeness. Staniewski's performances are made for a long time, minimum in five-year gaps. New performance gets out from the old one, the subjects and motifs are starting to bud and the old performance gets infected with some unexpected values of the new project. It reminds me of scratching from the Attic vase one painting in order to uncover the earlier patterns. Iphigenia at Aulis has a link with one of important plots of the Trojan myth: ritualistic murder of young Iphigenia by her father Agamemnon because of gods will. Staniewski looks at Euripides's text as at old manuscript composed from many earlier stories, he hearkens to echoes from the well of time to catch the oldest voice - old language of theatre. He knows, however, that even reaching it does not annihilate distortions, layers of new meanings that are embedded in it. That is why he is opening his antiquity to other cultures. The costumes in Iphigenia are going to look like kimonos. (.) A study of fanaticism The subject of the performance is crystallized in the final scene. Staniewski reads Iphigenia at Aulis as a study of fanaticism. Awfully sounding words of the Achaean commander's daughter willingly going to die are proving right thing that Greeks rule barbarian (trans. by Ch. R. Walker) . Ill and disabled child played beautifully by Karolina Cicha matures to her sacrifice, she marries death but this gesture does not come from what's good. Behind all this stands pride and hatred and vindictive satisfaction is very soon going to multiple her suffering by suffering of others. Because evil breads evil and insanity - insanity. Translation from Polish Ewa Zielińska |
Newsweek Polska nr 21/27.05.07
Tygodnik Powszechny nr 21/27.05.2007 
Przekrój nr 22/23/31.05.07