{"id":389,"date":"2020-12-04T20:56:29","date_gmt":"2020-12-04T20:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/22\/?p=389"},"modified":"2022-02-05T10:09:40","modified_gmt":"2022-02-05T10:09:40","slug":"lockdown-verses-and-anxieties-of-presence-how-polish-theatre-rhymed-a-case-for-its-purpose-on-the-pandemic-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/22\/lockdown-verses-and-anxieties-of-presence-how-polish-theatre-rhymed-a-case-for-its-purpose-on-the-pandemic-stage\/","title":{"rendered":"Lockdown Verses and Anxieties of Presence: How Polish Theatre Rhymed a Case for Its Purpose on the Pandemic Stage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Kasia Lech<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Liveness and co-presence are romanticized in Polish theatre as linked to its status as a platform for performances of Polish freedoms. Therefore, the outbreak of COVID-19 and the subsequent decision to close all theatres from March 12, 2020, have created very particular challenges not only to the economic safety and artistic expression of theatre and its artists, but also to its core traditions. Polish government\u2019s attempts to rewrite the constitution, organize fraud elections and limit women rights during the lockdown have made the situation even more challenging. This essay discusses how Polish theatre artists used verse form\u2014including Hip-Hop-derived performances\u2014to claim their agency over the new ecologies of theatre-making and engage with socio-political discourses.
Keywords:<\/strong> verse, Hip Hop, presence, heteroglossia, socio-political agency, Polish theatre, COVID-19<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To Olga Tokarczuk, the winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature, the impact of COVID-19 is that \u201ca paradigm of civilization that has shaped us over the past two hundred years is blown away. . . . [n]ew times are coming.\u201d This idea evokes Walter Benjamin\u2019s (and Paul Klee\u2019s) Angel of History with \u201chis face turned toward the past\u201d while \u201cthe storm irresistibly propels him into the future\u201d (392\u201393). Awaiting an unknown future by remembering the past reflects experiences of many theatres during the pandemic. It also contextualizes the recent popularity of archival theatre material online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Olga Tokarczuk: \u201ca paradigm of civilization that has shaped us over the past two hundred years is blown away. . . . [n]ew times are coming.\u201d Photo: Wikipedia<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This essay reflects upon how verse\u2014as a mode of language divided into a pattern of lines\u2014helps artists to negotiate between these different temporal contexts and to avoid the position of a \u201cwitness that looks and remembers but cannot act\u201d (LaCapra 150). I argue that verse emphasizes the presence of theatre artists; articulates their socio-political concerns, emphasizing their immediacy; and supports a creation of community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I look at verse as a platform to address the anxiety of presence brought upon by the pandemic. I argue: verse has heteroglossic quality arising from its organization not only by rules of grammar or syntax, but also by verse structure. Verse structure is the patternized use of the verse line and the formal principles such as metre and rhyme operating within it. In a live performance, verse structure emphasizes verse\u2019s rhythms. This, in turn, helps rhythmical levels of verse generate additional meanings to the lexical level of verse. For example, a metrical structure may refer to a cultural tradition, or a rhyme can connect two different words revealing otherwise invisible contexts. The rhythmical and lexical levels of verse (and meanings they generate) interact. In other words, verse in theatre does not only (often) represent a dialogue, but it is always in-a-dialogue. A striking example is a practice of some Irish poets, including Seamus Heaney, who used Irish metrical systems to structure verse in English. Notably, the heightened pattern emphasizes the dialogical interactions between lexical and rhythmical levels, as well as the tensions evoked by them. It also highlights various presences, such as the presence of the actor and a virtual presence of the author. Through all that verse can simultaneously stage, investigate and redefine existing relationships and contracts between theatre works, theatre-makers, audiences and spaces (for more, see Lech 10\u201334).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the current context, using verse illustrates the heightened need of theatre artists to affirm and confirm their presence and agency, as well as avoid invisibility. The invisibility does not merely mean a lack of visibility. Instead, the invisibility and the anxiety of presence connect to the experience of absence, which is in turn closely tied to relationality (Gr\u00f8nstad and V\u00e5gnes 2). Thus, the experience of presence and anxiety thereof link to live theatre, its potential for immediacy and the artist-audience communion. However, they also operate in a broader context of socio-political agency held by theatre and its artists. Moreover, the presence denotes \u201ca perception of a collective community\u201d affirmed by the public (Jensen 18).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Verse, as I explain, facilitates new ways of presence, communion, and artists\u2019 agency in all these contexts. It does so\u2014as my forthcoming analysis exemplifies\u2014by bringing to the fore cross-temporal liveness as \u201cundecidable space between registers of what is live and what is passed\u201d (Schneider, \u201cIt Seems\u201d 155). This becomes a springboard for the artists to activate processes of \u201cintrainanimation,\u201d allowing \u201cthe live and the no-longer-live to cohabitate, cross-interrogate, and pose old questions anew, or new questions of old\u201d (Schneider, \u201cSlough Media\u201d72; Schneider and Ruprecht). In short, verse provides theatre with tools to lead in crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The focus of this article is Polish theatre with experiences of absence deeply rooted in its troublesome histories. Arising from these are Polish theatre\u2019s role as a platform for performances of freedom, and the quasi-sacred status of theatrical space as a meeting point between audiences and actors. The twenty-first-century theatre closures due to frequent national mourning periods have raised questions about the role of theatre in crisis, further emphasized now by the pandemic. Therefore, the governmental decision to close cultural institutions on the March 12, 2020, had challenged artists\u2019 economic safety, artistic expression and \u201cspoke\u201d to Polish theatre\u2019s transhistorical experiences of absence. Even more so, as the governing party increased its divisive narratives in which consecutive groups\u2014refugees, people with disabilities, Jews or the LGBTQ+ community\u2014have been assigned the role of the threatening other. Polish theatre needed to be a platform for performances of freedom once again. However, the theatre closure made the task difficult, heightening the anxieties of presence and absence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All this provides a context to the alarming responses by leading theatre critics such as \u0141ukasz Drewniak, Dorota Ogrodzka and Dariusz Kosi\u0144ski. Drewniak emotively announced that for the first time in modern European history \u201cTheatre is NOWHERE!\u201d Ogrodzka linked the post-pandemic survival of theatre to its ability to \u201cbuild connections and encounters, collective experience, a collective reimagining of the world\u201d (Ogrodzka). Even Kosi\u0144ski, while defending online theatre, argued that it offered an opportunity for theatre artists to be actively present, shaping new ways of living. The upcoming analysis illustrates how verse facilitates these new ways of presence and experience and provides tools for artistic responses to a crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Challenging Homogenizing Narratives by Demarginalizing Diverse Experiences<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

The first example is the National Theatre\u2019s POECI POLSCY<\/em> (Polish Poets<\/em>). The Warsaw-based company framed it as a meeting point between its audiences, actors and Polish poetry. The project took a form of individual YouTube<\/em> videos published on the theatre\u2019s website and social networks between April and July 2020. There is no director attached to it, which creates a sense of collaborative ensemble creation. However, the first poem is the sixteenth-century epigram \u201cNa zdrowie\u201d (\u201cOn Health\u201d) by Jan Kochanowski performed by Jan Englert. Englert is a renowned actor, director and the National Theatre\u2019s Artistic Director. His presence brands it as an official National Theatre\u2019s project (rather than as an actors\u2019 initiative).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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