The Argonauts from Gardzienice

On 9th of October 1977, the first artistic and research Expedition to Roztocze moved from a little village of Gardzienice in the Lublin region.
It opened up the history of one of the most interesting avant-garde theatre companies in Europe.

The strange wanderers appeared in the Lublin region. They had thick beards, hiding their young faces. They were wearing storm-jackets and scout-rucksacks. They were walking from one village to the other, in searcg for old customs
and songs. They carried their luggage on a two-wheel carriage, which they were pulling themselves through the sandy paths. It was a quarter of a century ago.
Some people like them had already been seen in those villages. They came from Lublin to record the old singers, later these songs were radio broadcast on Sunday afternoons. But these guests were different, they listened to the singing,
but they also sung. They asked for stories, but they also told stories.
And in the evening they invited everybody for a meeting called "Gathering".
First they were singing with the people and afterwards they presented their performance in front of the cottage. The fabric hanging in front of the cottage
was the ir design, torches were a source of light. For many village people
it was the first theatre company they had ever seen in their life.

The Yogis, Jews, Angels.

They were called "the Yogis ", because during performances, they made strange evolutions like in a circus. Girls were jumping through fire rings, boys walking
on high stilts. In some villages they were called "the Angels" - like Christmas carol singers. In others - "the Jews" - like wandering street-sellers that used to visit those villages before the war. They were usually most welcome. Women would bring milk, men would offer them vodka. Only one thing made people curious:
the guests, instead of talking to the young hosts, preferred to keep on sitting
on the benches with the old folk. Why did they ask about the past, while the future was more interesting? Why did they keep on singing the old songs, while the radio broadcast new, better ones? And what after all, was their interest in the old, handicapped people, left with only one thing in their lives - death?
People had their right to wonder: everything in the country was running into
a different direction at that time. The flow of emigration from villages to big cities throughout Poland, the nation and the party were building the Better Tomorrow, with a small Fiat car and the metal work industry in Katowice as symbols
of the time.

The wooden houses were massively covered with wavy roof material. At the same time, the young people appeared, escaping from the developed Western region
of Poland to the backward East, looking for a place there, among the old people,
who still remembered the world without Cepelia folk art shops and television.
They were former active members of students' movement, some of them had some experience with theatre, writing poetry, composing music. Their leader, Włodzimierz Staniewski, a student of Kazimierz Wyka - was to become a lecturer at the University of Cracow. Instead of discussing with the students Michail Bachtin's work, he decided to look for the plebeian Medieval and Renaissance culture described by Bachtin, in the rural areas of Poland. He was not a pioneer
of the idea of artistic expeditions in the country. Half a century before, Juliusz Osterwa, the greatest experimenter in Polish theatre of the interwar period .organized, with his theatre company, "Reduta", several months long expedition through Polish rural areas, performing outdoors. In the 70s, the British director Peter Brook went to Africa and Asia with his international company to look
for inspiration in the local archaic cultures. The Italian Eugenio Barba was another Argonaut taking his whole group to southern Italy, in the mid-70s. They gave performances, and in response, local people were sharing with them their songs and dances.
Unlike Brook, who had his theatre in Paris, and unlike Osterwa, connected with Warsaw and then Vilnius; Staniewski decided in the very beginning to set up
a group rooted in the countryside.. In the old palace in Gardzienice near Lublin,
he created their base, a starting point for him and the group for several explorations every year, called Expeditions. Their first target was Eastern Poland, the Lublin region and the Bialystok region, later Gypsy Lemko enclaves at the South, then abroad: Italy, Scandinavia, Ukraine, Asia, America. The Golden Fleece, they went for, was the audience without any urban routines, vivid, sometimes unpredictable. That were also the traditions, songs, even behavior of the villagers, that were later used in performances, like the gestures of the healer, met on the holy Orthodox mountain of Grabarka, which they incorporated in the performance "Life of the Archpriest Avvakum".
But most of all, they were interested in the confrontation with different cultures. Staniewski believed, after Bachtin, that your own culture has to mirror itself
in other cultures in order to stay alive. The effect of such thinking about theatre were unusual performances, filled with ecstatic music and crazy dance, taking from Orthodoxy and from Catholicism, from Celtic legends, and the mythology
of the Polish-Ukrainian-Belarussian border region, from songs heard
in the Bialystok region, and callings brought from Lapland. These historically
and geographically distant traditions, were melted on stage into a plebeian carnival, where sin met holiness, and seriousness merged with laughter.
The most recent performance of Gardzienice, based on "Metamorphoses"
by ancient Greek playwright Apuleius, starts with the scene of a group of villagers - their faces turned into grimaces - who transform into the "Platonic Family"
of philosophers, dancers. In that ironic way, the Mediterranean culture,
that recently overexploited by Polish artists and politicians, became true
on stage.

Not Arcadia, often the hell

From the beginning, Gardzienice have been criticized by some.. The group
was accused of "village-mania", modernistic enchantment with peasants. Gardzienice were accused of pretending to be village people. Really, watching today the documentary film by Jacek Petrycki about the theatre work made
in 1993, you will see their country style of life, carrying water from the well, talking in the cottage kitchen, scarves on the women's heads and farmer's hats worn by men. At a certain point, Gardzienice became trendy, all over Poland students' groups went to the country, rehearsed and performed there. But it is
not by accident that only Gardzienice managed to survive. For Staniewski village was not the lost Arcadia, but often the hell, with its dangerous xenophobia, religious fanaticism, and nationalism. This was made clear in "The Life of Archpriest Avvakum" where the scientific debate among monks finished with:
"Kill the motherfucker!"
No doubts, this theatre demands initiation. This aura of initiation was created
also by the language Staniewski used to describe the work of his company
- "Gathering", "Gatherer", "make the mystery close", "sing out of the stone"..
You couldn't buy a ticket to see Gardzienice' performance, Staniewski was deciding himself, whom to invite. Getting to Gardzienice one wasn't to take a seat immediately. First you were taken to the Kutrzepa Cottage for a meal, then there was a walk through the meadows and over the bridge, and finally you were led into the dark little space for not more than 20 spectators. These conditions made it easy to accuse the group of artistic sectarianism.
If it really was a sect, its merit for Polish culture would be difficult to overestimate. A whole generation of artists came from there, who today, in different parts
of Poland, cultivate similar ideas. These include: "Pogranicze" Foundation from Sejny, established by Krzysztof Czyzewski, one of the first actors of "Gardzienice", working at the borderland of Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish culture; "Muzyka Kresow" Foundation was established by Jan Bernad, who in the 70s was wandering with Gardzienice through Eastern Poland, and now teaches hundreds of people from all over Poland an archaic way of singing, makes records and organizes workshops; "Song of the Goat" theatre company, founded
in Wroclaw by Anna Zubrzycka and Grzegorz Bral, Staniewski's actors.
Their performances are also based on archaic music. "Teatr Wiejski Węgajty"
led by Malgorzata and Wolfgang Niklaus, founded near Olsztyn, is just a northern bridgehead of Gardzienice. They also took their name from the village they work in. There is also "Studium Teatralne" of Piotr Borowski in the Warsaw district
of Praga, there are theatres in Austria and Scandinavia, founded by former associates of Staniewski. Even if their opinions on art are different, even if some
of them cut off their connections with the Center nearby Lublin, and followed their own way, often in opposition to what is Staniewski doing, they share one thing:
all of them went somehow through the initiation to traditional culture
in Gardzienice.
The performances of Gardzienice evokes mixed feelings in me. Those, which
I have seen on stage ("The life of Archpriest Avvakum", "Carmina Burana", "Metamorphoses") enchanted me with the perfection of singing and body language, but the weak point of them was the dramaturgy and composition, caused by the impression of seeing something unfinished. The director's commentaries were more interesting than the presentations themselves.
But I appreciate Gardzienice for giving the first voice to the culture of peripheries, long before the officially declared dogma of superiority of regionalism over the centralism, the province over the center. Today all over Poland there is some folk music group playing, by every main road there is some "farmer's food", the wavy roof material has been changed back to wood. One should remember that they were the pioneers
In the meantime, in Gardzienice, matures a new generation connected with tradition: the third course at the Gardzienice Academy. These are the same people one can meet at Ancient music workshops, at the concerts in the Dance House
in Warsaw, at festivals of alternative theatre and folk music. Young intelligentsia, looking for their identity, in the age of plastic culture choosing the culture of earth, wood and stone. I wonder, if they will also found their own Gardzienice one day.

Roman Pawłowski.