Agata S: You are regarded as a director who creates unconventional sets. You hang actors six or twelve meters, create a giant iconostasis that burns at the end, a cross-section of a block of flats, or have the viewer watch a scene from the perspective of a deceased mother observing her daughters' conversation over her own grave. From the perspective of the grave, we might add, as you suspend the actresses over the heads of the audience. Where do you get such highly unconventional ideas for scene solutions and for solutions in space?
Agata D-G: It is impossible to answer this question, because it is different in each case. What I can say for sure is that I don't take them from someone. The script and the art of the performances are created simultaneously. The most important thing is the point of view. When writing the scene of the sisters in "Apocalypse. An Abridged History of Marching," I created it from the mother's point of view. When creating a scene, I have to become each character, build up their mental, characterological, historical construction. Automatically make decisions, know whether a given statement is the result of an internal monologue, whether the character is lying, whether she is saying something important to herself, or whether a particular line just slipped out. Then the character's space also comes into play. In this case, I imagined a mother who has not gone to heaven and attends her own funeral. Only she can't interfere, unfortunately. If the four of them were sitting at dinner, she would take a stand. Now she can't. I wanted the viewer to perceive it in this way, so I cast him in the role of the mother, and the girls play their roles as daughters based on conflict, inspired by Chekhov's "Three Sisters."
The play "Apocalypse. An abridged history of marching", Stefan Jaracz Theater in Lodz.
photo: Greg Noo-Wak
Also in building the space, the subjective point of view is the most important for me. I use a different key in each performance, so it's difficult to talk about it in general terms. In the case of the burning iconostasis, I had the task of creating a performance under the title of gala "...revolutionary!". Not so much to do a staging of revolutionary songs, but to tell the story of what revolution is. Therefore, the most important idea was the character of an old woman, the Mother of the Revolution, played by the wonderful, on the one hand aged, and on the other hand still young, great lady of the Polish stage Marta Stebnicka. Revolution is as old as the world, and only the revolutionaries seem to be doing something for the first time. The children of the revolution eating themselves is an amazing pathological historical family. Through the historical context we see the revolution as evil, a hell on earth leading to unimaginable abuses, and I wanted it to be beautiful as well. Hence the burning iconostasis. I wanted to show it from the point of view of those who are tearing down the iconostasis. From their perspective, it's youth versus old age, humanism, strength in opposition to devotion and parochialism, but most of all the stupefaction that faith has brought throughout the centuries.
performance "...revolutionary!", Capitol Music Theater in Wroclaw
photo: Natalia Dobryszycka
Faith, like any phenomenon in human life, has two sides, and here we showed the bad one. The burning of the iconostasis, with all my love for Byzantine art, is sacrilegious, but also the foundation for something new.
Whether it be hanging girls, a burning iconostasis, monochrome walls, a sectioned block or houses with inverted perspectives, it serves to show a particular point of view. It is never a picture of the whole, always a fragment, a detail, subjective, tiny - because that's what interests me most.
Agata S: You are also an art historian by training, with a specialty in medieval Byzantine studies. You often build iconostases on stage. I'd like to ask you about the sphere of the sacred in your performances and whether they have anything iconic about them?
Agata D-G: Each of them is based on the philosophy of the icon and the icon. The letters to the characters, which the actors receive at the first rehearsal and which are the starting point for building the role, are the lives of the saints. The way a character is dressed, what kind of body motor he has, is always symbolic and is based on the character's past, his imagination, and the actions he performs. Just like the portrait representation on an icon. We can say that the moment the character enters the stage, he is an icon. With its backstory, that is, with its life and with its very specific form, symbolism, attribute. Each of my characters has an attribute, even a minor one. I give her, for example, children's shoes that tell the whole story of the lost child, medallions, holy pictures, jewelry. Specific clothing, which is already like an attribute of an icon. On stage, nothing can ever be accidental, just like in an icon. That's because the performance, like the icon, the Orthodox church, the iconostasis, is the Biblia pauperum, that is, the Bible of the poor, who cannot read and write, and only through the legibility of symbols understand all the content. I am thinking here not only of Byzantine or post-Byzantine iconography, but also of the European Middle Ages, when masses were celebrated in Latin. Most of the faithful did not understand Latin, while a theatrical performance was held before them. A combination of special effects, i.e. incense, light coming through stained glass windows, candles, torches, rousing music and rituals taking place at the altar, images that surrounded the faithful: frescoes, sculptures, mosaics. They were entering a sacred place, where there was simultaneously a past, meaning the Old and New Testaments, a present, meaning communing with both the dead and the saints, and communing with the deity. I try to make it exactly the same in the theater. That's why music is so important to me, it sets the mood, builds the space, transports the viewer back in time, brings him closer to the subjective state, the emotions of the characters. What I include in the image when I compose the scene, that is, what is in the scenery, in the costume, is what the actor no longer needs to play. My performances make sense if they are understandable even to those who don't know the language. That's why no stage drawing is ever random. It matters at what distance one character stands from another. Compositions of paintings, such as one-third-two-thirds, one-quarter-three-quarters, central compositions or, as in "Macbeth," point-line-plane, that is, based on Kandinsky's philosophy, evoke obvious associations: individual versus community, living versus dead, peace versus war. This precision, the fact that every color, every gesture, every setting, every light must match in its entirety, is what the consistency of the icon taught me. That's why it was sacred writing, not painting, the painter couldn't create as it played in his soul. He created art that was meant to be a bridge between God and man, a gateway to transcendence. That's what the visual arts in the Byzantine temple, in the Christian church, that's what the visual arts and space in the theater is to me. Very many of these things I do not tell the actors, because it does not matter to them, it is unnecessary and even boring. I don't have to tell them why exactly this costume, these colors, why exactly in this place of the stage they should stand. It also has to come from the relationship with the partner, and the actor has to be comfortable with the situation. My job is to prepare the actor in such a way, and to build the character's inner landscape and being in such a way, that the scene drawing I set up is obvious to him. So that he doesn't have to wonder whether he should be on the right or on the left, stand in front or behind the table. What I paint this way on the stage, we don't have to say or play.
Agata S: You talk a lot about iconic aesthetics, about iconic thinking, but at the same time some of your performances take place in M4. In a simple Polish reality. Do you somehow connect Polish reality with the sacredness of the icon?
Agata D-G: Are you talking about "After the Storm..."?
Agata S: Yes, but also about "Apocalypse. An Abridged History of Marching," "The Great Plate..." - all those performances that are happening at M4.
Agata D-G: They are happening at M4 for the actors, in the drawing I will always build an icon anyway. When you look at the scene of "After the Storm..." in which Prospero sits on a red, centrally placed couch, you will see the Throning Christ from all the apses of Byzantine churches and Orthodox churches. This is exactly the form, only instead of a rainbow there is a couch. People sitting around immediately arrange themselves into a deesis scene - a scene of adoration. The shelves are like an open iconostasis, on both sides of it is the same, because between the sacred and the profane there is no longer a division, they have already become one, for the reason that Prospero is approaching the end of his days, meeting himself. In the case of "Apocalypse. An Abbreviated History of Marching" we have the halal spaces I like very much. Imagine taking the backdrop of Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" or the backdrop of Bruegel's "Triumph of Death," which you clear of figures. And these are my empty spaces into which I introduce actors - individual episodes - so that the viewer can lean over them like an art historian, looking at them piece by piece. When you look at the whole, you see the mass, the general sense, but then you lean into each person. And this brings us back to the subjectivity.
The play "After Shakespeare's Tempest," Capitol Musical Theater in Wroclaw.
Photo credit: Greg Noo-Wak
Agata S: You mentioned "After the Tempest...". In answer to the next to last question, probably more than one work could be created.
Agata D-G: This I will try to answer briefly.
Agata S: You talk a lot in interviews about the fact that with your latest play, "Odysseus and Pigs, or the Story of a Mythomaniac," you settle accounts with the myth of your own home. Often, too, whether in the arrangements of the scenes or in the set design, you can see the aesthetics of your dad [Jerzy Duda-Gracz - editor's note]. How did his way of seeing the world influence your stage aesthetics?
Agata D-G: I probably don't even realize, for the reason that I never experienced a rebellion against home. I don't so much settle accounts with him by making performances, as I miss him or pay homage to him. The fact that when building stage images or creating characters I am inspired by my dad's paintings is obvious, because I grew up among them. A great deal of my worldview or my view of life, the world, and art is drawn from how my father looked at them. Many times I realize only after the fact that I have quoted him. That's why with every performance I can say that I was inspired by my father, because I carry his images inside me. Sometimes, as in "Odysseus...", I dedicate a certain stage arrangement to my father or mother. Dad drew heavily on tradition, so automatically, through him, I go to specific iconographic sources, and that includes both Western and Eastern European painting. I don't know whether I carry this house inside me, or this house carries me. I used to think that I would be able to cut myself off, that I would be able to create without it. At the moment I know it was very immature. I can tame the mourning, learn to live with the absence of my parents, while I will never cut the umbilical cord and I will never detach myself from the way they thought about the world, for the reason that I actually continue this thinking in a consistent and faithful way. That's why someone who knows my father's paintings, looking at my performances, recognizes them. Although sometimes I do it really subconsciously....
Agata S: Thank you very much for the interview.
