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UK film premiere
and discussion of 'Iphigenia at Aulis' with
At 2.15 pm on Monday 26 October 2009 in the Auditorium, Magdalen College , Oxford . The lecture will be followed by refreshments. Iphigenia at A...in Oxford, 26 th October, 2009.
The UK premiere of Staniewski's Iphigenia at A ..., filmed in Gardzienice and in Delphi took place in the auditorium of Oxford's famously beautiful Magdalen College on Monday October 26 th . Magdalen College was founded in 1458 and counts amongst its many notable alumni not only Oscar Wilde (who studied classics known as 'greats') but, more relevantly, the well-known British theatre director Katie Mitchell who trained for a time under Staniewski in Poland. The event was conceived by Dr. Fiona Macintosh, director of the Archive of the Performance of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD) founded in 1996 by Oliver Taplin and Edith Hall who remains a co-director. The film was screened before an invited audience of panelists and scholars and persons brought together by their interest in the ever-changing significance of antiquity and in the unique work of Gardzienice. The film was introduced by its director, Wlodzimierz Staniewski who, after greeting the audience and acknowledging the presence of friends and colleagues, recounted the earliest beginnings of Gardzienice in the bleak countryside of Eastern Poland by his company of actors owning no more than a wagon and boundless courage and determination. The introduction touched the nerve of some of the film's themes such as the pilgrimage to and away from 'home' dominated by landscapes of mythical proportions. One could hardly imagine a greater contrast between the film's content -the timeless wild Parnassian landscape-and the luxurious 15 th century architecture of the Oxford venue with its Gothic buttresses, pinnacles, carvings and mouldings. And yet the dazzlingly brilliant autumn sunlight on October 26 th on the college lawns made it easy to adjust to the almost punishing Greek summer sun shining on the sleeping faces of the exhausted cast of Polish actors-the opening scene of the film. The Iphigenia in A..., as in dreams that are more vivid than waking life, transported us into a world of olive groves and mountains teeming with goats of every manner of shape, size and colour. The final scene of Iphigenia's sacrifice and 'rescue' takes place in the purple-hued hollows of the Corycian cave-an ancient site of sacrifice to Pan and the nymphs, associated with Parnassian Apollo and Dionysos and allegorically the passageway to the world of birth and death beyond. For Staniewski, the cave is also the locus of the origins of theatre. The film ended to enthusiastic applause. The panelists were then asked to give their personal responses before opening the discussion. Chairing the panel was Oliver Taplin, Emeritus Professor of Classical Languages and Literature, University of Oxford and probably the greatest pioneer in restoring opsis (the visual aspect) and performance to the place where they belong-at the heart of ancient Greek drama. Oliver Taplin's publications on Greek iconography such as Comic Angels (1993), and Pots and Plays (2007) and theatre, such as The Stagecraft of Aeschylus (1977), and Greek Tragedy in Action (1978), have, as acknowleged by Staniewski, played a significant part in Gardzienice's Greek productions. (Present in the audience was also another scholar who influenced Staniewski's Greek work-the author of the definitive ' Ancient Greek Music' (1992), Dr. Martin West of All Souls College ) The first respondent was Dr. Pantelis Michelakis, Honorary Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Bristol. Pantelis Michelakis is the author of Euripides ' Iphigenia at Aulis (2006) and he is currently working on a book on the reception of Greek tragedy in cinema. He marked out three areas of outstanding interest: • The richly ambiguous way in which the various possible endings of the Euripides Iphigenia in Aulis are presented: does Iphigenia in fact die at her father's hand on the altar, is she replaced by a goat and rescued by Artemis at the last moment, or is the scene of the sacrifice an allegory? The film scenes of the sacrifice may be read on multiple levels. • The film juxtaposes theatrical scenes of the Iphigenia at A ... performance to panoramic and historically significant scenes of landscape in the region of Delphi and Parnassos and by the sea. The camera unusually both respects and reconstructs the subject manner as the documentary values give one a sense of the physical reality of the mountainscape. • A related point is the striking and consistent contrast throughout and on different levels between the artificial and the authentic. The film is therefore is an excellent vehicle for exploration of authenticity. For instance, what happens when language encounters authenticity? The next respondent was Alexia Kokkali, actor from Greece and Programme Director of European Theatre Arts at Rose Bruford College in Kent. Alexia Kokkali has worked closely with Staniewski having performed in Elektra and in Iphigenia at Aulis in Poland and London and, more particularly, in the Frynihos theatre at Delphi and in the making of the Iphigenia at A... film in July 2008. She would find it difficult, she said, to adopt a scholarly perspective on something which she had experienced so vividly from the inside: her response was immediate and visceral and it took her by surprise to have experienced the same level of intense Bacchic energy while viewing the film as she had while taking part in it. As she phrased it, 'fragments of emotion' continued to impact beyond the intellect. She also remarked that, as a native of Greece, she had experienced a sense of shame at have been guided by Staniewski, a foreigner, to places she had not previously visited. She added that she had been astounded at his ability to impart such profound and intimate knowledge of a countryside acquired through meticulous research. Alison Hodge, Reader of Theatre Practice at Royal Holloway University of London, author of several publications on acting and the theatre (such as Twentieth Century Actor Training, 2000) and founder and artistic director Theatre Alibi, probably carries the most authoritative voice on Staniewski, having been an artistic associate of Gardzienice and having co-authored with him a definitive book on his work- Hidden Territories (2003). The film, she said, had overwhelmed her by an onslaught on the senses. What had taken her by surprise was that such an onslaught could be achieved in film in a way that is usually done in theatre. She had tuned into a powerful current of lamentation all through the film culminating in sacrifice which had left her exhausted. Sustaining that level of intensity from beginning to end had been courageous. The next major point made by Alison Hodge, which later echoed during the discussion, was the extraordinary energizing of the landscape-probably the refinement of many years of Gardzienice's expedition work. The Corycian cave, she noted, was as much if not more of a performer in the film than the actors. Extraordinary also were the balance between landscape, music and actors and the consistently high energy level sustained by the musicality of the performance. Alison Hodge concluded by drawing attention to the relation between music and landscape and asking Greek specialists how they felt that the text corresponded to other aspects of the film. The last respondent was Edith Hall. Edith Hall is Research Professor in Classics and in Drama and Theatre at Royal Holloway University of London (previously Leverhulme Chair of Greek Cultural History at the University of Durham, and Tutorial Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford). Edith Hall's titles reflect the extraordinary erudition with which she has brought together the two rich fields of Classics and Drama without diminishing either. The creation of an entirely new field-that of reception studies-is largely thanks to her formidable intellectual energy and to that of her colleague Fiona Macintosh. Among her very many publications of learned monographs, such as Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition Through Tragedy (1989) and a forthcoming publication on Iphigenia in Tauris, and innumerable articles, is a long list of theatre and film programme notes for modern productions and frequent appearances on radio and television. Her ability to make the ancient work come alive is without precedent and she did not disappoint on this occasion. Edith Hall started by saying how she strives to impress on her students the force of the all-embracing power of nature in the world of antiquity. Being, as she put it, an 'urban girl' herself, she realizes the leap that needs to be made in order to take on board the sensuality of the Greek world of sacrifice. She asked the audience to imagine the assault on the senses of the hecatomb-the sacrifice of hundreds of cattle being killed without the help of any technology. She thought that the film, with its overwhelming landscapes teeming with animal life, captured the centrality of nature. Edith Hall then suggested that recent scholarship too often emphasizes the sacred/ritual aspects of the play at the expense of its moral/political aspects. She pointed out that in Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis , the dreadful action -the killing of Iphigenia by her father-can be stopped at any time- but nobody stops it. Regarding the staging, she remarked that the theatre scenes delivered to the front give a strong sense of the hypocrisy behind. Edith Hall concluded that the film's energy had reminded her just how Bacchic the Iphigenia at Aulis was and that it now made sense to her that it had been composed to be in the same group as Euripides' Bacchae. Oliver Taplin then gave a resume of the above, inviting Staniewski to comment. He concurred with Edith Hall, stressing that the play was, after all, about a murder, and added that he had been struck by the power of the interpretation of the character of Iphigenia-especially by the transformation of the frail figure of the young girl at the beginning who becomes so full of life just before her ending. Wlodzimierz Staniewski paid tribute to the comments starting with acknowledging his debt to academics, to scholarly research and to personal friendships with several Classics professors. His responses may be summarized as follows: • He expanded the concept of authenticity by emphasizing its ambiguity and pointing out that artificiality is much more eloquent. • It is possible to see in Iphigenia at Aulis (as indeed in one of his other productions, the Elektra ) hints of melodrama in the switching between text and drama and in the sequences of people crying and dying and crying..... • He stressed that the mob and the horrors of the mob are central to his interpretation. • The clue to the Iphigenia in Aulis, he feels, is hypocrisy. • Music, he said is his co-director or, rather, the daimon implanted in the work and he drew attention to the oscillations between listening to words and listening to music. • He thanked the respondents for appreciating the role of the landscape and added that for him the landscape was a 'witness'. Sergei Parajanov, the Armenian film director (1924-1990) had been an early influence. The discussion was then opened to the audience. In the short time that was left a member of the audience (whose name was not given) said how struck she had been by the unprecedented 'authenticity' and richness of the music. Staniewski gave a brief account of the creation of the music and its relation to 'original' Greek music. (Reference to this may be found on this website under 'Metamorfozy' ) David Wiles, professor of Theatre at Royal Holloway University of London, who had also taken part in the making Iphigenia at A... in Delphi but had not previously seen it, congratulated Staniewski for having translated the 'live-ness' of the theatre to the cinema screen. He noted how Staniewski taps into the mythic and religious dimension and landscape memories (evocative almost of Abraham's sacrifice) and felt that maybe it was the early work in the Polish countryside which had given access to these mythic and religious layers. The discussion was then continued on an informal basis at a reception in the Magdalen Auditorium foyer where students of Reception studies and visitors from Poland and other interested guests had the opportunity to put questions and exchange views with the film's director. Yana Sistovari Warsaw, November 3 rd 2009.
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