Faculty of Polish Studies

This presentation aims to introduce a different approach to actors training. Developed through experiment, training is seen here not as a process of adoption of a given acting technique (thus incorporation un-neutral body image and/or body technique) or process of deconstructing and eliminating any un-neutral habits, but as a script of ‘prearranged experience’ that can be actualized, giving an actor a chance to understand on a deep somatic level the general principles of the profession, and to use them in creating and composing their actions in any given aesthetic and ideological context. This approach based on the notion that actor training is in fact in contrast to sports training primarily cognitive process (although not necessarily verbalized and fully conscious), not just the executive one. Therefore this approach sets us outside the alienating and subjective perspective of a trained body that as a product of training is or is not neutral, towards the question of a human/actor consciousness and one’s professional/creative choices.

W swojej praktyce scenicznej Wsiewołod Meyerhold rozpoznał zapotrzebowanie na „nowego aktora”, obdarzonego nową świadomością miejsca, jakie zajmuje w wieloskładnikowej kompozycji spektaklu. W jego koncepcji aktor, operując świadomie dostępnym mu materiałem (ciałem i głosem) ma być odpowiedzialnym współtwórcą przedstawienia. Biomechanika powstała jako odpowiedź na to zapotrzebowanie, zmieniając fundamentalnie paradygmat pracy aktora. Stworzony eksperymentalnie trening jawi się nie jako skończona, dana do opanowania i naśladowania technika gry aktorskiej, ale jako scenariusz „przygotowanego doświadczenia”, który może zostać odtworzony i zaktualizowany, pozwalając aktorowi w praktyce, na poziomie doświadczenia somatycznego, zrozumieć generalne zasady rządzące zawodem i według nich komponować swoje działania w dowolnej estetyce i dowolnym kontekście.

I have been collaborating with Tomasz Rodowicz for many years now. He is one of founders of Gardzienice Theatre and later CHOREA Theatre. In his (and later in my own) pedagogical practice we use journaling or reporting as a part of (self)educational process. We convince students and participants of workshops to write or create in any other form (vlog, drawings, poems, interventions) notes from work or their response to it. They are often scribbles or drawings so I would like to reflect on usability of journaling in training practice and self-reflection in training.

The paper presents the Oratorium Dance Project and its impact on the activities of the CHOREA Theatre after 2011.

In 2010-2011, the Chorea Theatre carried out the groudbreaking project for its biography: the Oratorium Dance Project. It was inspired by the project of Simon Rattle, the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, and Royston Maldoom, choreographer, who attempted to popularise classical music by engaging 250 people from local community into performing it. The Chorea Theatre responded to a similar challenge. A group of one hundred participants, led by an American choreographer Robert Hayden, Earthfall Dance group and Chorea Theatre artists, featuring the Orchestra and Choir of the Łódź Philharmonic Orchestra, created a dance and music performance. Maciej Maciaszek and Tomasz Krzyżanowski composed a musical piece Oratorium Antyk/Trans/Orchestra especially for this project. It was based on the arrangements of music from ancient Greece. This project's purposes were primarily educational. It was addressed to young people aged 13-24, children and and seniors (50+) from Łódź and the Łódź region. The group of young participants included people from disadvantaged environments and at risk of social exclusion. Implementing Oratorium Dance Project required from the artists a risky undertaking of going "into the city", many months of engagement with workshops and difficult stories of people's lives, as well as a test of their own maturity, that this team had not experienced before. This project and its results determined  new directions of development for CHOREA and new scales to measure its success and failure. For the Chorea team, the existential and social resonance of the project became the fundamental validation for art they wanted to create and promote. The Theatre's activities after Oratorium were essentially a consequence of experiences resulting from Oratorium. They determined the programme of two consecutive editions of the Retro/Per/Spectives festival and its smaller special editions, Perspectives, the only festival in Poland which, in 2015, was entirely devoted to presenting so called engaged theatre, working for and in the communities at risk of social exclusion and raising the issues of defavorisation. Currently, the CHOREA theatre is composed of  three groups born out of experiences from the workshops preceding Oratorium.

The paper presents the Oratorium Dance Project and its impact on the activities of the CHOREA Theatre after 2011.

In 2010-2011, the Chorea Theatre carried out the groudbreaking project for its biography: the Oratorium Dance Project. It was inspired by the project of Simon Rattle, the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, and Royston Maldoom, choreographer, who attempted to popularise classical music by engaging 250 people from local community into performing it. The Chorea Theatre responded to a similar challenge. A group of one hundred participants, led by an American choreographer Robert Hayden, Earthfall Dance group and Chorea Theatre artists, featuring the Orchestra and Choir of the Łódź Philharmonic Orchestra, created a dance and music performance. Maciej Maciaszek and Tomasz Krzyżanowski composed a musical piece Oratorium Antyk/Trans/Orchestra especially for this project. It was based on the arrangements of music from ancient Greece. This project's purposes were primarily educational. It was addressed to young people aged 13-24, children and and seniors (50+) from Łódź and the Łódź region. The group of young participants included people from disadvantaged environments and at risk of social exclusion. Implementing Oratorium Dance Project required from the artists a risky undertaking of going "into the city", many months of engagement with workshops and difficult stories of people's lives, as well as a test of their own maturity, that this team had not experienced before. This project and its results determined  new directions of development for CHOREA and new scales to measure its success and failure. For the Chorea team, the existential and social resonance of the project became the fundamental validation for art they wanted to create and promote. The Theatre's activities after Oratorium were essentially a consequence of experiences resulting from Oratorium. They determined the programme of two consecutive editions of the Retro/Per/Spectives festival and its smaller special editions, Perspectives, the only festival in Poland which, in 2015, was entirely devoted to presenting so called engaged theatre, working for and in the communities at risk of social exclusion and raising the issues of defavorisation. Currently, the CHOREA theatre is composed of  three groups born out of experiences from the workshops preceding Oratorium.

Punktem wyjścia analizy jest wskazywana niejednokrotnie przez badaczy korespondencja pomiędzy koncepcją rzeźby nowoczesnej Katarzyny Kobro (1898-1951) a biomechaniką teatralną Wsiewołoda Meyerholda (1874-1940). Poglądy Kobro rekonstruuję głównie na podstawie książki autorstwa Katarzyny Kobro i Władysława Strzemińskiego Kompozycja przestrzeni. Obliczenia rytmu czasoprzestrzennego, skupiając się na zagadnieniach łączności rzeźby z przestrzenią i formalnego ukształtowania przestrzeni, rytmu czasoprzestrzennego i architektonizacji rzeźby, która staje się w tym ujęciu teoretycznym modelem dla komponowania przestrzeni wchodzącej w interakcję z ciałem ludzkim. W analizie biomechaniki oprócz dokumentów posługuję się własnym doświadczeniem cielesnym tej techniki, którą rozumiem głównie jako zapisany w praktyce zbiór zasad kompozycji ruchu ciała aktora w przestrzeni. W analizie skupiając się na takich jego elementach jak gra rakusami i trójfazowość ruchu, rytm naprzemienny ruchu i „form plastycznych w przestrzeni” wysuwam wniosek iż biomechanika teatralna oparta także na rytmie czasoprzestrzennym jest modelem komplementarnym wobec propozycji Kobro.

https://www.polishtheatrejournal.com/index.php/ptj/article/view/144/830
The article is a comparative analysis of the concept of modern sculpture by Katarzyna Kobro (1898–1951) and the theatrical biomechanics of Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874–1940). The starting point is the alleged community of experiences of the artists' milieu and their affiliation (even temporary) to the constructivism movement. Jablonska reconstructs Kobro's views based on the book  Spatial Composition: Calculating the Spacetime Rhythm , focusing on the issues of formal shaping of space, spatio-temporal rhythm and architectural characterisation of sculpture, which becomes a theoretical model for composition of space interacting with the human body. Here the author sees the correspondence of Kobro's concept with Meyerhold's theatrical biomechanics, which she understands mainly as a set of rules for actor's body composition in time and space, or in other words, the implementation of the principles of spatio-temporal rhythm in the body.

The purpose of the paper is to determine the basic role of cover versions in the reality of culture 2.0. The starting point for the essay is a reflection on several key concepts for this issue, including ‘stereophony’ of cover songs (established by Deena Weinstein) and the ‘authenticity’ of covering artists. At some point every cover is a kind of music translation – one piece of music is translated into another, sometimes even from a different genre, with a careful attention to creative sensitivity and private means of expression. Author focuses on a very specific group of covers – the ones which are interpretative, recorded for gaining popularity and, most of all, created to post them on the Internet (for this reason they have been named e-covers). Case study of the Postmodern Jukebox project makes it possible to reach broader conclusion about the complicated relationship between the original version and the cover, the importance of audiovisual poetry, and the potential for subversion in such an intertextual performance.

Twin Peaks stanowi hybrydę kilku krańcowo różnych stylistyk, ale jedna z nich odgrywa kluczową rolę i wydaje się strukturyzować całą prezentowaną widzowi narrację. Nadużywanie klucza postmodernistycznego może prowadzić do niesłusznej marginalizacji kwestii gatunkowych. Tymczasem analiza podstawowych wyznaczników narracji kryminalnej (zwłaszcza w literaturze) w zestawieniu ze szczegółową interpretacją wątku detektywistycznego w produkcji ABC uruchamia świeże, inspirujące odczytanie serialu jako kryminału metafizycznego. Referat uwzględnia problem zbrodni, metod przeprowadzonego w diegezie śledztwa, a także kreacji postaci detektywa i jego antagonistów. Wykazane zaadaptowanie, przekształcenie, a wreszcie odwrócenie narracji kryminalnej odsłania konsekwencje takiego zabiegu dla wykreowanej przez Twin Peaks wizji zła, człowieka i świata.

This article outlines the impact of changes in social structures on literary communication in contemporary Polish poetry. The author, using tools borrowed from sociology (Bruno Latour's Actor-Network Theory and Manuel Castells's concept of network society), analyzes the communication structures in poetry published after 2012. Among the quoted and interpreted poetic books are Pamięć zewnętrzna by Radosław Jurczak, Animalia by Anna Adamowicz, Pamiętne statusy by Łukasz Podgórni, HWDP jako miejsce na ziemi by Tomasz Pułka, and Wiersze organiczne by Kacper Bartczak.

Słowa kluczowe: ANT, teoria aktora-sieci, społeczeństwo sieciowe, poezja najnowsza, komunikacja literacka
Keywords: ANT, Actor-Network Theory, networked society, contemporary poetry, literary communication