6 questions for the 6th edition – an interview with Krystyna Meissner
For 12 years Krystyna Meissner has been in charge of the Dialog-Wrocław International Theatre Festival, ceaselessly looking for increasingly difficult discussion topics, increasingly original artists as well as uncommon, surprising languages of theatrical communication.
What is involved in the preparation of another edition of the Festival? Is modern theatre still able to surprise Krystyna Meissner? Is there anything that she has not been able to do at the Dialog Festival?
Krystyna Meissner provides answers to these and other questions in an interview with Tomasz Kireńczuk, the Festival spokesman.
Tomasz Kireńczuk: The Uncommon is the motto of this year’s Festival. How do you define uncommonness? What was the key to selecting the 15 Festival productions?
Krystyna Meissner: I never use any particular key when selecting productions for the Festival. The motto – because it has become a tradition at the Festival to choose a motto that encapsulates the ideas of the various productions – emerges, in a way, as a consequence of a specific choice of productions. It indicates what those productions have in common, what expresses a certain anxiety which besets artists working in theatre today. What I try to show in the international programme is what we still don’t know, what is, in a way, a search for a new language, a new form, but at the same time tackles issues that so far have been treated as taboo. When selecting Polish productions, which I would like to confront with those invited from other countries, I try to promote young Polish artists. I think that when trying to answer what young Polish artists look for in theatre and what they have to offer in it I haven’t really been wrong so far. Krzysztof Warlikowski, Grzegorz Jarzyna, Jan Klata, Michał Zadara and Barbara Wysocka, who have been guests at my festival, are well-known artists today. Coming back to the criterion of selecting Festival productions, there’s only one: whether I’m fascinated with the production I’m watching. So I take full responsibility for the Festival programme. One could say that this is my own festival. The motto of this year’s Festival is “uncommonness”. It has emerged from a reflection on whom today’s directors choose for the protagonists of their productions. Sometimes uncommonness applies to the director’s attitude to the subject he or she tackles; sometimes it’s simply about an uncommon theatrical language.
“Uncommon”, as I understand it, means extraordinary in a positive sense. Such an individual is not trying to be original; he or she is simply different, perceives the world differently and tries to share this with us. Let’s not reject this different way of seeing the world, because it usually expands our horizons. At a time when our behaviour is subordinated to common social norms, we have to defend our right to uncommonness, to individualism.
Tomasz Kireńczuk: At this year’s Festival, most directors are young, aged between 30 and 40; what image of the world emerges from the works of artists coming from such different countries as Chile, Romania, Slovenia and Poland?
Krystyna Meissner: Undoubtedly, there is at least one common denominator of the works of these young directors: it’s the persistent asking of a self-referential question about who they are, where their place in this world is. Sometimes their answers are rebellious, sometimes ironic, sometimes grotesque. It matters that directors like Carbunariu, Layera, Sieklucki and Klemm ask these questions from the point of view of their generation, their age. This requires courage. They have it.
Tomasz Kireńczuk: Productions directed by Carbunariu, Frljic, Layera, Castellucci, Dante and Platel are of works written especially for them; van Hove, Lupa, Opryński, Sieklucki and Giannini work with free adaptations of prose. Does this mean that contemporary theatre is tired of literature? That drama is too constricting for it?
Krystyna Meissner: Classic dramatic literature is rich and beautiful. But finding a key to it, discovering how to stage it today, in order to be able to say something about ourselves through it, is extremely difficult. That is why directors reach for prose, sometimes unusual prose, or write their own texts. After all, Moliere or Shakespeare did just that as well. They wrote for their own troupes of actors. Perhaps a new great writer will be born as a result? We’ll see. Personally, I don’t like plays written about current events, especially political ones. I call them one-offs, because they never get staged again. Fortunately, this is a marginal phenomenon in Polish theatre. True, some theatre critics love it, but they will one day get bored with it and let’s hope that in our liquid modernity they too will one day want to consume something more tasty, something more profound.
Tomasz Kireńczuk: Romeo Castellucci, Ivo van Hove, Alain Platel, Krystian Lupa – these are the biggest stars of this year’s Dialog. What is so special in their theatre that keeps attracting crowds of faithful spectators and provoking fierce criticism from its enemies?
Krystyna Meissner: These four names are a good example of a perception of the world completely different from our own. Each of these artists sees this world differently. They try to share with us this uncommon, clearly more profound and often controversial view of the world. That is why they provoke admiration and harsh criticism. They simply break with what is regarded as the norm in theatre. For me they are uncommon. And all credit to them for that!
Tomasz Kireńczuk: When talking about the Festival programme, you constantly refer to Zygmunt Bauman, who will be, as a matter of fact, a special guest at the Festival. What, in your opinion, is and should be the place of theatre in a liquid modern world?
Krystyna Meissner: In his works Professor Bauman has touched upon the function culture should perform in the reality we are living in. If the most important element of our everyday lives is consumption – which is a consequence of our appetite for a new and better life – then culture should serve as a guardian of what should be remembered from tradition, of what should be transmitted from the past to the future. Culture, just like all other elements of our lives, is subject to the same laws, i.e. is driven by the need to present new topics and courageous statements again and again. This doesn’t change the fact that culture and only culture can preserve the basic canon of values in our increasingly consuming and consumed world. Given this perspective, theatre should be our conscience, an attempt to introduce some order into this changing world with regard to the values we consider important and still valid. It may not seem much and yet it is so much.
Tomasz Kireńczuk: You have been organising Dialog for 12 years. Over this period Wrocław theatres have welcomed the most important Polish and foreign artists; performances have been presented not only in theatres but also in psychiatric hospitals, prisons etc. Is there anyone you haven’t yet managed to bring to the Festival? Is there an event – not necessarily theatrical – you would like to take place during the Festival?
Krystyna Meissner: Fortunately, there are many such events I’ve been trying to bring to the Festival for years but for this or that reason haven’t managed to do so yet. There are two phenomena in particular which have been haunting me and I will certainly bring them to Wrocław, but I will name neither the directors nor the companies, because our competitors are not lying idle and one of the conditions of taking part in my festival is not having been presented elsewhere in Poland before. I am an optimist and I know that European theatre and Polish theatre will surprise me positively every year. It’s a great joy to be able, every two years, to share my theatrical fascinations, let’s call them “finds”, which make us believe that theatre is not disappearing from our lives, that we need it, that it’s alive and is still evolving in ever interesting forms; in other words – to be able to share all this with the crowds that flock to the Festival. It’s hugely satisfying!