Lidii Zamkow: Pamięć – niepamięć – re/mistyfikacja

Annales Universitatis Paedagogicae Cracoviensis. Studia de Cultura

Ewa Łubieniewska¹ 

[1] Uniwersytet Pedagogiczny im. Komisji Edukacji Narodowej w Krakowie;

关键词: Zamkow theatre;    re//mix;    creative personality;    predatory aesthetics;    existentialism;    politics;    new language of theatre;    nonconformism;    artistic courage;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

In the convention of “liquid modernity”, as the present culture is commonly named, memory of the past is not an overly favoured category. A different attitude is displayed by the creators of the so-called RE//MIX: a framework that assumes searching the past for legendary biographies or artistic phenomena with which young artists could confront their own views and agendas. The leading character in one of such projects (run by Weronika Szczawińska) is Lidia Zamkow, a great theatrical director of the second half of the 20th century, rarely recalled in the inter-generational discourse nowadays. Even the title of this RE//MIX – 2 or 3 things I know about her – foreshadows the difficulties in completing the mission, which is discovering the truth about this complex, extraordinary personality. In view of the implied lack of documentation, the performance has been put together from conjectures, hypotheses and expectations of the director, and references have been made to plays which were peripheral in her work, the choice of which was determined by the initial assumption of the project. The authors of the performance picked Zamkow, searching for a forerunner of feminist art and Gender attitudes. Disappointed, because they did not find what they had expected, they formed the thesis of “artistic mediocrity” of the heroine of a “phantasm”… It is a most unjust opinion. The shows staged by the defiant interpreter of the modern theatrical drama (e.g. Mrożek’s Turkey in 1961, Brecht’s Mother Courage in 1962, Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera in 1965, Camus’ Caligula in 1963) shocked the spectators and grabbed their attention. Her interpretations of the classics (Macbeth in 1966, Oedipus the King in 1968, The Wedding in 1969) were often written about, and were expected to enter the history of theatre. Zamkow’s ferocious, but also poetic aesthetics evoked enthusiasm and provoked polemical disputes. She annoyed the traditionalists and scared the opportunists. ”The Lower Depths staged in Krakow (1960) almost clinically reveals the weaknesses of our critical work”, stated openly Marian Sienkiewicz in his article on the Russian current (his favourite) in Zamkow’s work (especially memorable creations are Dostoevsky’s Uncle’s Dream, Tolstoy’s Resurrection, and Sholokhov’s Quietly Flows the Don). The director continually evoked controversy by breaking up with the traditional rules of staging Brecht and Dürenmatt (she showed The Visit in the convention of a cruel fairy-tale). She interpreted Shakespeare’s tragedies and comedies from the perspective of Jan Kott’s thought, giving the staging a modern theatrical shape. In Kafka’s Amerika (1968) she demystified two utopias of the promised land: the American prosperity and the “community of the dispossessed” (Ameryka, in ”Tygodnik Powszechny” 1968, no. 39), effectively applying the poetics of silent movies to the organization of stage movement in some scenes. True to her concept of the theatre, she did not yield to the dictate of the elites. The fierce attacks on her creation of the Apparitions in The Wedding were in fact voices in a debate on the new language of the theatre, in which an unpredictable, multifaceted metaphor replaces stage stereotypes. The fact that this artist’s phenomenon has not been examined yet does not prove her “mediocrity” (which was unjustly and wrongly suggested by the RE//MIX deconstructors), but rather implies that the critics are not yet ready to accept the challenge to comprehend the productivity and complexity of Zamkow’s artistic personality.

【 授权许可】

Unknown