I Had a Dream…

The performance starts suddenly, one does not know when it really happens because it is proceeded by a kind of an introduction, lecture or lesson. Włodzimierz Staniewski explains to the audience the theoretical foundations adopted by Gardzienice in their antiquity project. Slides are projected on a white screen, including a fragment of a musical notation from Orestes, perhaps composed by Euripides himself. It is a truly fragmentary notation, only a few lines have been preserved (and even these are incomplete), and they cannot be considered to constitute a full notation. Each attempt at performing this music today requires not only laborious and time consuming academic research and reconstruction, but also creative involvement complementing the notation. The actors grouped at one side of the stage sing a fragment of Orestes in the most austere way, scanning words and syllables for which the musical notation has not survived or is undecipherable. It is just a musical outline, but it intrigues with its rhythm, sound and also concentration of actors, trying not to add any ornamentation or anything at all. In a minute the same phrases of Euripides’ text explode with full musical expression – but then it is the fantasy of contemporary artists on ancient music, even though the raw outline read in the musical excavations can be still heard in it. The actors are getting ready for the performance, singing lively, one would want to say – with their bodies. While singing they move forward, towards us, the audience – led by a natural longing for expression and need to establish connection with people. The same fragment of Orestes resounds several times, as a waltz, Spanish tune and folk tune. We already feel drawn , both into the secrets of ancient culture and a dream on antiquity dreamed by contemporary artists.
      The show continues. It is time for gestures that is art of cheronomy. This old form of art has survived in the manners of people from the south, in the energy of their gestures – Staniewski explains, engaging the audience more and more in his dream, activating our imagination, using the fascinating dialectics of distance and closeness. We enter into communion with culture which does not exist any more, of which only small bits have remained, but also with culture which is everywhere, has been preserved in folk songs, bodily gestures and dreams. We can feel heirs to ancient culture and it does not happen due to our erudition. The director’s presentation is not an academic lecture. It aims at establishing a connection, experiencing a sense of community. The quality of community is of a very high rank in Gardzienice. This is not a community of similar sensitivity; it is neither based on a mechanism of provocation nor a sense of harm. It is not established by fear or compassion. Staniewski locates the most elementary human experience, also related to body, in the area of culture and knows how to draw people into the territory of its secrets. He even knows how to enchant and thrill. It is the most evidently conscious objective of his performances.
      The show of gestures is led by Joanna Holcgreber. Slides flicker on the white screen: the strangest positions of human bodies preserved in sculptures, on vases and paintings. Staniewski speeds up the tempo. It is not only about repeating the gestures; they have to be charged with energy, even excessive energy. The gestures are artificial, poses elaborated, but there is abundant vitality in them. Each gesture bears its ‘inscription’. Beauty, the other, misfortune, woman, man, Electra, temple, household - all gestures are commented by the actress. In front of our eyes an alphabet of signs is created. Although their meaning may appear imposed and arbitrary, the very process of theatre that originates from what is most rudimentary – body, sign, word, rhythm, a need of connection - does not. It can also be put in a different way: body needs a sign, enjoys it and is not oppressed by it. F or Staniewski culture is not oppressive. The poetics of his performances leads to a conclusion that culture is, first of all, the area of vital expression, personified memory as well as live and direct bond.
      With help of a few gestures a dialogue can be established, wooing performed (Joanna Holcgreber and Mariusz Gołaj), community set up (the company gathers around the actress, repeating her gestures). This is an etude for imagination, but also a show of vitality and sense of humour. In their approach to antiquity there is again the same freedom we got thrilled by in Metamorphoses. Staniewski’s passion for ancient culture does not burden the audience with any complexes; we do not have to feel like degenerate successors of great ancestors and dwell on the drama of disinheritance. It is a wise and responsible attitude (it is hard not to recognize the elements of nobly approached pedagogy, free from moralizing), which releases us from carrying an already slightly boring argument (a caricature of which we witnessed in the recent discussion on Rozmaitości theatre) between dogmatic conservatism, guarding values, and cultural diversion as the only true way. Staniewski, in the past inclined towards cultural missionary work, seems to be more detached. His Greece is neither Wincklemann’s nor Nietzsche’s Greece; it is a conglomerate of various and changing religious and psychological images; multi-layered and heterogeneous culture, taking in all influences in which there is a lack of uniform conception of such terms as ‘divinity’, ‘soul’, ‘personality’, where relations between body and soul remain unresolved. It was conveyed in Metamorphoses, and gets reinforced in Electra.

Sudden turmoil pulls the actors away from Joanna Holcgreber. The whole space starts pulsating in the rhythm of a folk dance tune. We are at the court in Argos, a site of joy and lust. The only element of stage design is six empty wooden (...) placed in one line against the white curtain. The costumes form a strange mosaic: tunics, jackets, skirts, trousers, and colours – white, black and red. It is also apparently playing a theatre game; unrestrained and vital. A piece of text appears (Orestes’ monologue addressed to Pylades), shadowed by dance, singing, music. Time gets mixed in the turmoil. Present: arrival of Orestes. Future: on the white screen we watch animation showing a brutal scene of a woman being killed by a girl and boy. Bits of Euripides’ text provide a commentary; they announce Clytemnestra’s death and build a bridge between ‘the old and new days”. It is already clear that Staniewski’s performance will have nothing to do with an academic reconstruction of ancient theatre and it will not be easy to get rid of the associations with the violence in the modern world. The drastic event takes place in an open window frame: we witness a pure act of physical brutality. The performance of Electra will become a commentary to this scene, but also to our emotions awoken by it. Or perhaps we should rather say that these emotions are merely one of the bridges linking different periods.        An actress playing one of the instruments is drawn in by a colourful crowd of dancing figures – as if by force put into a role of Electra. She becomes part of the circle, but at the same time gets excluded from it. She is pushed, pulled, humiliated, but still takes part in dancing and eventually becomes a victim of it. She gets raped; one of the actors (Mariusz Gołaj) puts on a mask of Aegisthus and only for a blink of an eye appears between the wide open, pulled up legs of Electra. In Staniewski’s performance each element of the story acquires a status of a meta theatrical fact. The story is not told but created; here and now, in front of our eyes. It is not a plot, but a theatre-experience, not a sign only. It activates all dimensions and planes of time, available instruments of narration and potential of actors. It opens the space of time not only inside the drama, but also around it in order to transform its all dimensions into a sensual presence of theatre. A group of colourful and grotesque figures sits around raped Electra. They are neither children nor dolls. They form almost a still tableau. It is a dream-like scene in which the experience of reality undergoes a strange distortion. Their naïve, dead eyes and innocent voices can express compassion as well as indifference and mockery. Amidst them Electra’s face, frozen in pain; she carries this grimace of a tragic mask from the very beginning of the performance, but only now it speaks to us powerfully as a counterpoint. A compassionate gesture of washing her abused body, breasts and thighs, the young companions hurry up to her with, does not bring any relief to Electra, it even emphasizes her estrangement and disgrace. In Greek tragedy the events on stage take place against the background of past and present stories which are narrated. In Staniewski’s performance narrative gets transformed into gestures, action, movement, drawing past into present, pulling it into its vortex. The fatality of past crimes acquires the power of a visible fact. In Euripides’ drama we learn about past in the Peasant’s prologue, monologues of Electra and Orestes. Here we have present time on stage and the fragments of the prologue and monologues are chaotically scattered: taken out of context and chronology they become either a nervous attempt at arranging what is deprived of any order or is an expression of untethered emotions. F.ex. Electra’s first lament was taken from the final bit of the drama, Stasimon IV, after the murder of Clytemnestra. Despair with which it is shouted out, can express both humiliation and defilement which Electra experienced, as well as torturing sense of guilt after the murder (recalled in a cinematographic technique). The non-linear and non-fictional dramaturgy of the performance allows both possibilities. Peasant-narrator appears with his prologue very late in the performance; what is more, his story seems to introduce a plot of a secondary importance in Staniewski’s performance. We learn about Clytemnestra and her lover, Aigisotos, killing Agamemnon, but in the performance Electra has her own hurt to take revenge for. Staniewski does not dwell on the metaphysics of the family ill fate, although he creates the world stigmatized by crimes in an extremely suggestive way: he does not arrange them in a logical chain of dependencies, but immerses them in the chaos of human evil, always open to find motives for him. Even though he leaves the prologue, he changes its significance and role – widening the circle of past and present crimes. By doing that he also releases the heroine of Euripides’ tragedy from Electra’s complex – a theme of her relationship with her father is not featured in the performance.
       Staniewski breaks the structure of the text (it is an artistic decision of an essential significance for the shape of the performance). He leaves only some fragments of the drama and composes them in a new way. It results in a special effect of density. Firstly, as it has been pointed out, time gets mixed. The arrival of Orestes, rape of Electra and killing Clytemnestra appear almost in one sequence. The concentration of stage time derived from ancient theatre acquires a completely new expression. Secondly, the stage reality becomes polycentric, explodes with emotions and events in several places at the same time, in particular owing to the presence and intervention of three figures: Electra (Anna-Helena McLean), Chorus Leader (Joanna Holcgreber) and Actor (Mariusz Gołaj) playing ever new roles. Each of these figures belongs to another level of stage reality: plot, commentary and finally the very act of creation (we can see Euripides in the character performed by Mariusz Gołaj. Some kind of meta theatrical tensions emerge among these characters. Chorus Leader tries to take on the part of Electra in the first sequence, after Orestes’ words: ‘Oh, I can see one of the servants/ She is carrying a heavy pot on her shaved head”. It is also her who utters Electra’s words pushing Orestes to kill Aegisthus, as if translating the gestures of Electra shocked by the excess of emotions. Also Actor steals Electra’s role at some point. There is a rivalry among the actors for leadership which can be interpreted also in another way: it can mean the author’s struggle with his demons (Electra’s part becomes a parody when performed by man) and aspiration of the drama characters to get an advantage over their creator. These meta theatrical tensions get juxtaposed with relationships between Electra and Orestes or Electra and Clytemnestra, disturb the course of events and finally reveal the complex structure of dramatic text and stage reality. Some parts of the plot get summarized by Chorus in a truly brief version, single words and gestures accompanying them, introduce us into pre-action. At first it seems there is no connection between them, finally they get arranged into simple narrative sequences. Message is conveyed not so much by means of gestures, but their energy, untethered will to establish communication with the audience, conveying the truth about atrocities. This briefness makes an impression there is a need to hurry, as if the present events did not allow to dwell so much on the past, because the mechanism of ill fortune (or rather the engaging stream of actors’ energy) has been set in motion. At the same time the drama plot gets reduced to the simplest, as if archetypal elements: man, woman, child, mother, revenge, fear. What is interesting, Electra steals the gestures of Chorus immediately to express her pain – however, it is not a narration any more, it is pure expression. Her hands dance ceaselessly, cutting the air with fast syncopated rhythm. It creates an impression of a painful imbalance between a need and potential of expression, but the impetus of expression always wins over the imperfection of words and gestures. It may refer to emotions and psychology of characters, as well as to theatre as a medium of communication, or finally an attempt at bringing back to life the language of ancient culture. The whole performance unfolds on these several levels. The same applies to a mask, an emblem of ancient tragedy. It is mainly a mean of actors’ expression, an attempt at another expression: the immobility of face releases body language. But it also defines the condition of Electra, her being stuck in trauma. Masks appear also as colourful objects, taken from various traditions. Not carefully made, they manifest theatrical nature of presented reality, its vital rural energy, but they also serve to create an expressionistically distorted image of the world, reminding of the paintings by James Ensor. Figures in masks, getting together in a fixed semi-circle, are like demons from a bad dream (of Electra? Euripides?). The violation of the original text arrangement results in the reduced clarity of the plot and its changed rhythm. The connections between respective episodes cease to be obvious, for instance, Electra and Orestes meet after Aegisthus’ death. Electra’s final lament gets moved to the beginning, whereas her filled with hatred monologue addressed to the dead body of Aegisthus is recited after mother’s death. The plot arrangement and orchestration of emotions are changed – even a spectator, who does not know the drama well, is bound to sense that there is something wrong. However, the lack of clarity is fascinating and engaging; the distortions incite imagination and do not leave space for rational analysis. According to Freud, density and distortions are the principles of dream dramaturgy. Staniewski makes use of them in order to dig a new structure out of Euripides’ drama, annoyingly dependent from the original. Just like Euripides was carrying a dialogue with the existing theatrical versions of the myth, now Staniewski carries a far reaching reinterpretation of Euripides’ tragedy, or rather imposes a new layer on the existing cultural palimpsest, without erasing the earlier notations.
       For Euripides does not write about Electra being raped by Aegisthus, although the ambiguity of some fragments of the text and mainly Electra’s hatred allow a possibility of accepting the event added by Staniewski. A motif of stigma and purification through crime from religious sphere (but it is not really featured in Euripides’ Electra) is transferred into the sphere of psychology and gets fulfilled within one generation. However, I get an impression that it is not so much the reinterpretation of the text as the simplification of the plot scheme and concentration of energy that go beyond the level of actual events. The idea to use rape as the justification for Electra’s behavior is not the very best solution, especially that Staniewski removes (apart from one already mentioned fragment) the most beautiful and moving fragment of the drama: the lament of Orestes and Electra after killing their mother in which the murderers mourn over their victim. “I am free”, Electra says triumphantly after her mother’s death. These two interventions result in the simplification of Electra’s image. However, we do not get this impression watching the performance. The simplification of the plot allows building the role of Electra along one line, spasm and violent discharge – and Anna-Helena McLean does it in a fascinating way. Strengthened, or rather taken to extremes, the energy of acting transforms despair into inspiration, and pain acquires threatening characteristics. The very moment of rape almost disappears in the dense matter of the performance – like a memory of a terrible nightmare. We remember only the spectacle of humiliation and the dramatic clash of two worlds: joyful court and hurting Electra from the initial scenes of the performance. Out of this clash the director creates an elaborated emotional, vocal and choreographic counterpoint. It provides the actors with the possibility of a sudden jump into the regions of the extreme states and ability to establish polyphonic, flickering reality. Staniewski simplifies plot connections, but he does not do it with the structure. He is fascinated with a Greek tragedy as a form, cultural excavation. He introduces dialogues into the performance at a very advance stage, first creating the matter of the performance out of lyrical laments of Electra and narration of Choir as if recreating the archeological arrangement of the genre layers. The first attempt at a dialogue seems to be awkward and unsatisfactory – an actor intervenes and takes a role away from an actress. However, another attempt moves with its extremity of emotions and conflict. Electra persuades Orestes to kill their mother. The whole dialogue runs on a speeded up breath of violent emotions but also sexual excitement. Orestes’ body is strung like a bow (in the spasm of fear facing killing his mother or orgasm). Orestes lies on Electra’s knees, she bows over him lovingly like a mother, but talks to him passionately like a lover. She discloses her breast and feeds Orestes, as if she wanted to erase from his memory a figure of his mother he is about to kill. Staniewski called this tableau “Feeding with hatred”. It is one of the most moving scenes of the performance because it refers to the most rudimentary emotions (love, hatred), archetypal images (maternity, Pieta), forbidden experience (incest), at the same time activates a course of irresolvable contradictions as if revealing the rules of emotional impact of Greek tragedy. A great duet of Electra and Clytemnestra (Anna Dąbrowska) is based on simpler dramaturgy. We cannot see a mother and daughter; there are two women: immaculate and defiled, disinherited and surrounded by the splendor of power. They sit on two thrones, placed close to the audience in that scene. The thrones move towards the audience in turns, attributing even more aggression to the words. Is it a battle for dignity or power? Symmetrical positioning of the women and monotonous rhythm of their dialogue makes them equal not so much with respect to their dignity as to their fierceness. We do not follow the reasons of the argument which once led Clytemnestra to crime and now they demand revenge. Both women are manifest the utmost hatred and aggression – their argument goes below all political, moral and psychological reasons and might provide a perfect illustration of the mythology attributed to Euripides. Staniewski continuously balances between an objective and subjective approach, looking for the most original. and because of that, the most vital roots of theatre. He does not ignore also those dark and instinctive ones. He diagnoses and analyses Euripides as a cultural creation and personal statement of the author. Both crimes are performed in a spectacular and ceremonial way; a dance with a sword, which can be associated with ritual martial arts (Aegisthus’ murder) and a dance with fans (Clytemnestra’s murder). Euripides links these two crimes with a religious ritual in a mysterious way. Orestes kills Aegisthus while he performs ritual acts (and eventually he becomes a ritually sacrificed animal). Clytemnestra enters Electra’s house to perform a ritual connected with her daughter’s child-birth. In both cases a murder becomes the profanation of a religious ritual, but also fulfillment of sacred duty which Euripides was rather critical about– like a modern anthropologist - pointing to violence as a source of rituals. In the performance Clytemnestra puts a bowl under Aegisthus wound and having walked away drinks his blood in one go. The symbolic of sacrifice get profaned and abused by Electra – it is a theatrical and exalted attempt at sanctifying the crime. In Staniewski’s performance Pylades becomes a murder, or rather a dancer with exotic eastern features (Julia Bul-Ngoc). Orestes is the most passive observer of the crime. It proves the weakness of his will and character as well as certain confusion of ying and yang elements in the real world. It is true that Orestes shows his well-built body, but he is a completely passive character – activity is left for women. It is not an accident that one of climaxes is an argument between Electra and Clytemnestra – they initiate the committed crimes. Also it is a woman who performs a crime. However the rituality moves them into a non-personal sphere, into the sphere of fate, anyway more powerful forces than conscious ‘I’ of the protagonists, obviously associated with an image of a woman in Staniewski’s performance.

      Already in ‘Metamorphoses’ Staniewski employed the term ‘theatrical essay’, in Electra he develops the potential of the genre he created. It was a conscious choice to take up Euripides, a great ‘destroyer’ of tradition. Jan Łanowski proposed to include the famous scene of recognition in ‘Electra’ to the history of literary criticism. In case of Euripides it is difficult to differentiate between a plot, metadrama and metatheatre. The myth matter is shaped by conscious deformations, elements of parody, changes of scenery, lowering of the characters’ status. In ‘Electra’ the extreme vividness of crime in the context of ordinary rural life seems to be –according to Tadeusz Sinka – an unintentional parody. The question remains: is it truly unintentional? Staniewski plays around the variety of tones in Euripides’ tragedy, clashing them forcefully. He does not restrain from parody – it is how the first dialogue between Orestes and Electra is approached. The actress playing the part of Electra gets replaced by a man (Mariusz Gołaj), the parody of a transvestite. Thus the dialogue in which Electra still does not recognize her brother and boasts of her virginity (in spite of her marriage with Peasant) sounds grotesque and ridicules the naivety of this scene. Many critics consider a beautiful song about the ships traveling to Troy a form of the genre degeneration. It is a little poem loosely connected with the action, and its artificially added conclusion irritates – Sinko and Kitto fuss about it. It is a beautiful scene in Staniewski’s performance. The song about ships is sung lively and joyfully in bright light by Chorus, standing in the centre of the stage, now with another leader (Marcin Mrowca), for another element is represented – not narrative, but lyrical. At that point changes the mood after Electra’s lament, after the frenzy of rape and fun. But the end of the song is like awakening from a beautiful dream – its final fragment addressed to ‘the perverse daughter of Thindarey’ resounds with Clytemnestra’s hysterical vulgar laughter. Does it demonstrate her conceit? Does she try to silence her fear and premonition of her death? “I will see how from a white neck blood will spring shed by a sword” – sings Chorus. What was considered an ‘unfortunate idea’ (the song being loosely connected with the action and artificially referred to in its final fragment) by the authorities on Greek drama, radiated with theatrical beauty and drama in the performance.
       Staniewski considers Euripides as non-conformist innovator, blasphemer, avant-garde artist, that is exactly how he was seen by his contemporaries. A list of his formal innovations in the field of rhythm, music, ,metre, plot composition, use of monologues and Chorus songs is as long as a list of scandalizing themes (directness in expressing sexual desire, incestuous and homosexual relationships, inclinations towards extreme, almost pathological emotional states, godlessness, enjoying atrocities). It turns out that now we can argue about Euripides almost like we do about Sarah Kane - the artistic value of his works has not been a settled issue. This argument has been running over the centuries. It is still another method of Włodzimierz Staniewski of building bridges between different times and interpreting cultural tradition within the space of personal intimate communion with the masterpiece.


PS. I have an impression that Stanisław Wyspiański patronizes this ancient project and staging of Electra from afar. The title of my essay comes from his drama.