SENSACIONALE GRANDE FINALE
A circus - traditional domain of stage creativity, falling into decline in Poland, associated almost purely to "the lowest form of culture". Appreciated and well-known In West European and American countries, several years ago refurbished and modernized, appearing in numerous strains and variants, often of big artistic ambitions, called a new circus, art circus or - similarly to a phenomenon of a dance theatre - circus theatre. Traditional circus is a spectacle of a strongly codified structure, containing characteristic motifs, characters and course of events. Main characters of a circus show are an acrobat, a clown, a conjuror and a tamer. Once a kind of circus was a freak show, a show of human oddities. A circus is a capacious metaphor of the world as well. Differing from more dignified "theatrum mundi", circus - magic, fantastic and vibrating - directs us rather to disharmony, describes a disarray of the world and chaos of existence, carrying along a note of anxiety, since during circus acrobatics an artist risks his life. Each circus should have its name.
Hans Bellmer - German surrealist and scandalizing artist. His creation merged sexuality with lining to disintegration, degradation, death. Bellmers creation central motif was naked or semi-naked doll, which in hands of male artist-demiurge undergone tragicomic, often cruel transformations. Born, like Herich - the performance director, in Katowice. They both graduated the same secondary school. In Bellmers creation, like in Teatr A PARTs performances sex and death interlock. This creation stands aloof from temporariness and realism, and at the same time autobiographical, carrying experiences, fascinations and fears towards illusion and transcendence. Hans Bellmer died in 1975. The same year Tadeusz Kantor for the first time staged his incredible The Dead Class. Bellmer is exceptionally nice name for a circus.
Cyrk Bellmer - poor circus of Teatr A Part, circus about dying, freak show, stretched out between entertainment and dead, erotic and burying of dead, circus in a graveyards warehouse, on a memories rubbish dump, surrealistic-fatalistic cabaret, grande massacre, "the lowest culture" spectacle. Dedicated to these who had or will gone.
First night performance: Kinoteatr Rialto, Katowice, PL, 17.11.2011.
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concept, script, direction and set design: Marcin Herich
script co-operation: team of the performance
acting: M. Katarzyna Gliwa, Natalia Kruszyna, Joanna Pyrcz, Monika Wachowicz,
Cezary Kruszyna, Marek Radwan, Lesław Witosz
set co-operation, production: Cezary Kruszyna
music: fragments of works by Olafur Arnalds, Social Interiors, Kato Hideki, Skuli Sverrisson Hanka Ordonówna and traditional circus music
duration of the performance: 65-70 minutes
CRITICS
The Teatr A PART specific is an expressive, physical acting, an intense presence of the actor as a body. Based on extracting its morphological, individual attributes, a stylistics of theatre of body and emotions can be constructed. Taking the advantage of creative potential of living human tissue and an immanent dramaturgy contained in it, the performances profit by an authenticity. Teatr A PARTs authors are interested in imponderables, that is "something" - this what you can't describe nor comprehend, and which has an enormous meaning and a power of subconscious influence on human beings behaviour. Marcin Herich's performances don't really describe a mysterious phenomenon - they try to catch its boundary character. Thus they initiate new ways of understanding humans existence, expanding limits of our experience.
Cyrk Bellmer performance is an obvious reference to unusual personage of Hans Bellmer. What made a younger artist to start a dialogue with an elder's heritage is an obsession of worlds omnipresent dichotomy of life and dead, sacred and profane. The director brings to life Bellmer's dolls, in order to, in a drastic ritual according to law of nature, kill them again. Took out from a primary context they are thrown on a circus arena. This surrealist space full of weird creatures is the only place when, as a freaks of nature, they can exist. But a Frankenstein's creature frees itself from its creator and begin to live its own life, being menace. Therefore it must be annihilated. Dead however doesn't mean the end of existence, as one body switches fluently into another one. Something dies continually, to give another life.
We witness a repeated ceremony, accomplishing by a symbolic sequences of formalized gestures. They are related to a phenomenon of taboo and fetish of a females womb. The dolls act unwittingly, guided by a map of memory depicting a topography of their own bodies. The main points are marked out by a wet body cavities, like eyes, mouth or vagina. These are an erogenous zones, connecting entrails with this, what is external to body. Mannequins, deprived of their own initiative, lustfully prone and very plastic, undergo all impulses. Their bodies constitute an outlaw territory, open to every kind of demiurgic manipulations. Under duress and supervised by torturers, conducted on strings marionettes show a huge range of expression. From howling in desperation, by a frenetic delight they reach a cruelty, mourning and finally death visuality of the mystery was arousing a various reactions of the spectators. One were trying to avoid watching, other opposite, were revelling of the view, moving their eyes to see as much as possible, nearly falling down from their chairs. Boundless and exhibitionist nakedness was but fully justified and far from consumer, light erotica. Without it the performance would lose its sense. This metaphysical orgy began from an innocent fun but turned into initiation accomplished by an act of violation. The situation, played live, touches and awakes mans animal instinct. Destructive and fertile at the same time exist not beyond right and wrong, but among them. We witness as living toward death instinctively fights for survival. Females holes, being a source of suffering, utter a silent scream, which is impossible to free from for a long time after leaving the performance. The experience is so strong, that bewildered spectator doesn't know how to distance from what he's just seen. The staging disturbs some kind of humans constant and perturbs an internal moral imperative. And stupefied he's losing the sense of direction. Doesn't know how to comprehend the performance and how to keep on living after that...
Agata Goraj, Portal Katowicki, [Katowice, Poland]
