Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T09:24:32.201Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Eimuntas Nekrošius's Transnational ‘Voice from Lithuania’: Reinterpreting Polish Classics within Frames of the Theatre of Sensual Metaphors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2022

ARTUR DUDA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The aim of this article is an interpretation of Eimuntas Nekrošius's performances staged in the National Theatre Warsaw in the last years of his life. In the context of complex political and cultural relationships between Poland and Lithuania, the aesthetics of the theatre of sensual metaphors invented by Nekrošius might be perceived from an uncommon perspective – not as a type of universal art presenting crucial issues of mankind, but as a transnational reinterpretation of Polish classic plays – first of all, the nineteenth-century Forefathers’ Eve by Adam Mickiewicz, the Polish poet born near Vilnius in Lithuania. From this point of view, the theatre of Nekrošius reveals his political potential to create a transnational bridge between neighbour states. The author tries to apply notions of ‘subaltern agency’ (Gayatri Spivak) and the ‘cosmopolitan subject’ (Yana Meerzon) to present the complex issue of empowerment of Polish and Lithunanian subjects – from rejection of the false messianic consciousness to transnational rapprochement.

Type
Article
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , October 2022 , pp. 252 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

1 Hobsbawm, Eric, The Age of Empire 1875–1914 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson), 2010, e-bookGoogle Scholar.

2 Spivak, Gayatri, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Point (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1999), e-bookCrossRefGoogle Scholar. Meerzon, Yana, Performance, Subjectivity, Cosmopolitanism (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), e-bookCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, pp. 231 and 234.

4 Ibid., p. 247.

5 Meerzon, Performance, Subjectivity, Cosmopolitanism, p. 24.

6 Ibid., p. 10.

7 See Meerzon's comment on Kwame Anthony Appiah's notion of cosmopolitanism in ibid., p. 22.

8 Ibid., p. 17.

9 bell hooks, ‘Marginality as a Site of Resistance’, in Russell Ferguson and Trinh T. Minh-ha, eds., Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), pp. 241–3.

10 Mickiewicz, Adam, Pan Tadeusz (Wrocław: Ossolineum Press, 1994), pp. 3–4Google Scholar.

11 Mickiewicz, Adam, Pan Tadeusz, or the Last Foray in Lithuania, translated Mackenzie, Kenneth (London: Polish Cultural Foundation, 1964), p. 1Google Scholar.

12 Kolankiewicz, Leszek, Dziady: Teatr Święta Zmarłych (Gdańsk: Słowo obraz/terytoria Press, 2020)Google Scholar. Kosiński, Dariusz, Polski teatr przemiany (Wrocław: The Grotowski Institute, 2007)Google Scholar.

13 Meerzon, Performance, Subjectivity, Cosmopolitanism, pp. 13–15.

14 Appadurai, Arjun, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), p. 44Google Scholar.

15 Adam Mickiewicz, Stepy akermańskie, in Mickiewicz, Wybór poezyj, vol. 2 (Wrocław: Ossolineum Press, 1997), p. 81.

16 This is my revised proposed chronology. See Rasa Vasinauskaitė, ‘Eimuntas Nekrošius: The Poetics of Paradise and Hell’, in Kalina Stefanova and Marvin Carlson, eds., 20 Ground-Breaking Directors of Eastern Europe: 30 Years after the Fall of the Iron Curtain (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan 2021), p. 149.

17 Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatisches Theater (Berlin: Verlag der Autoren 2005), p. 24.

18 Ramunė Marcinkevičiutė, ‘Eimuntas Nekrošius: Complex Simplicity’, in Ramunė Marcinkevičiutė and Ramunė Balevičiutė, eds., Contemporary Lithuanian Theatre: Names and Performances (Vilnius: Teatro ir Kino Infromacijos ir Edukacijos Centras, 2019), pp. 43–64, here p. 45. Cf. Ramunė Marcinkevičiutė, Eimuntas Nekrošius: erdvė už žodžių (Vilnius: Scena ir Kulturos barai, 2002).

19 Duda, Artur, ‘Eimuntas Nekrošius i jego teatr zmysłowych metafor’, Litteraria Copernicana, 2, 28 (2018), pp. 77–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Marcinkevičiutė, Eimuntas Nekrošius, p. 44.

21 Ibid., p. 45.

22 Edgars Klivis, ‘Inside Frozen Geographies: Baltic–Russian Theatre Exchanges after 2014’, Nordic Theatre Studies, 32, 2 (2020), pp. 138–55, here p. 144.

23 Appadurai, Modernity at Large, p. 48.

24 Ibid., p. 167.

25 Marcinkevičiutė, ‘Eimuntas Nekrošius’, p. 46.

26 ‘Chciałbym zrobić “Dziady”’, interview with Eimuntas Nekrošius’, Teatr, 4 (1998), pp. 8–10.

27 Sowa, Jan, Fantomowe ciało króla: Peryferyjne zmagania z nowoczesną formą (Cracow: Universitas Press, 2011), p. 430Google Scholar.

28 The dialectic of derision and apotheosis (dialektyka ośmieszenia i apoteozy), in Grotowski.net encyclopedia, at https://grotowski.net/en/encyclopedia/dialectic-derision-and-apotheosis-dialektyka-osmieszenia-i-apoteozy (accessed 7 June 2021).

29 Roach, Joseph, The Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), pp. 2–3Google Scholar.

30 Appadurai, Modernity at Large, p. 35.

31 Marvin Carlson, The Haunted Stage: Theatre as Memory Machine (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003).

32 Drewniak, Łukasz, ‘Nekropolis’, Didaskalia, 23 (1999), pp. 38–43Google Scholar.

33 Cf. Artur Duda, ‘Wypatrywanie, czyli Dziady Eimuntasa Nekrošiusa’, in Duda, Reżyserskie strategie inscenizacji dzieła literackiego (Toruń: Nicolaus Copernicus University Press, 2017), pp. 203–13, here pp. 204–5.

34 Ibid., pp. 205–6.

35 Kopciński, Jacek, ‘Dusza z ręki poety’, Teatr, 5 (2016), pp. 8–12Google Scholar.

36 Adam Mickiewicz, Dziady (Warsaw: Czytelnik Press, 1992), scene vii – the Warsaw salon, ll. 63–7, p. 225, translation Artur Duda.

37 Mickiewicz, Dziady, l. 44, p. 111, translation Artur Duda.

38 See the review of this performance: Artur Duda, ‘A Lithuanian Marriage in Warsaw or The Last Production of the Great Eimuntas Nekrošius’, European Stages, 13 (2019), at https://europeanstages.org/2019/06/14/a-lithuanian-marriage-in-warsaw-or-the-last-production-of-the-great-eimuntas-nekrosius/ (accessed 14 September 2022).

39 Zbigniew Majchrowski, Krypta Gustawa (Warsaw: The Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute, 2021).

40 Gaonkar, Dilip, ‘A Preface to Rancière’, in Durham, Scott and Gaonkar, Dilip, eds., Distributions of the Sensible: Rancière between Aesthetics and Politics (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2019), e-bookGoogle Scholar.

41 ‘Police or Police Order’, entry in ‘Appendix I – Glossary of Technical Terms’, in Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible (London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2013), e-book.

42 Slavoj Žižek, ‘The Lesson of Rancière’, in Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics.

43 Katarzyna Fazan, Michal Kobialka and Bryce Lease, eds., A History of Polish Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).

44 Grzegorz Niziołek, ‘The Politics of Non-political Theatre’, in ibid., pp. 275–89, here p. 282.

45 Joanna Krakowska, ‘A Political Subject’, in Fazan, Kobialka and Lease, A History of Polish Theatre, pp. 260–75, here p. 262.

46 Bakuła, Bogdan, ‘Kolonialne i postkolonialne aspekty polskiego dyskursu kresoznawczego (zarys problematyki)’, Teksty Drugie, 6 (2006), pp. 11–33Google Scholar, here p. 25.