| Anhelli: The Calling / Breslau 1945 |
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Performance by Teatr ZAR, as part of “The World as a Place of Truth”: 2nd Season of the Masters Thu–Sat 8–10 October 2015, 19:00 Dworzec ¦wiebodzki, pl. Orl±t Lwowskich 20b Admission: 20 PLN sekretariat@grotowski-institute.art.pl; tel. 71 34 45 320 Please note that all booked tickets must be collected from the Office (Rynek-Ratusz 27) no later than one day before the chosen performance.
Exiles came to the land of Siberia, and having chosen a broad site they built a wooden house… Juliusz S³owacki, Anhelli, translated by Dorothea Prall Radin, 1930
The performance piece, which is a tribute to the author of Anhelli and his journey from Naples to the Holy Land via Alexandria, Cairo and Damascus, will be dedicated to the city of Wroc³aw and all those who came here just after World War II. Like in October 2011, in the ruins of a church in Belchite near Zaragoza, in the city that still bears traces of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), Anhelli will again resound in a very particular context. It will be performed at the ¦wiebodzki Railway Station, where 70 years ago people coming from the eastern lands, forced to leave their homes, got out of trains before they settled in the foreign, dramatically destroyed city which they have made their new home.
Anhelli: The Calling, created during Teatr ZAR’s travels in Europe, is built out of fragments of Corsican, Greek and Sardinian liturgies, as well as Russian Orthodox hymns. However, the strongest of the consonances that build the piece is silence, which we have integrated into the sound of the ruins of St Augustine’s Church in Belchite, despite its destruction, despite the history. We will come to the ¦wiebodzki Railway Station convinced that theatre – like a column of sounds – will allow us to create an axis between the past and the present. Jaros³aw Fret Anhelli’s theme is a phenomenon that Theatre needs to face in order to protect its essence and its place in this world. It is the theme of the integrity of our life, of our corporality, of our own selves. The theme of possession. Of making a vessel for a different life, even a future one, out of our own selves. The theme of illuminating, of “over-angeling”. Of being possessed by an angel. How to make an angel transit through a human body; how to let that angel live there for a moment? In what musical form? In what vibration? We live in the cathedrals of our bodies, with ornamentation and gilding of facades, and with placement and relation to the others being of most importance. But the theme of Anhelli is calling for small country wooden churches where we stay enclosed in our aloneness. Closed within. Instead of cathedrals – small temples of the heart. Small churches of the body. Chapels and meeting halls. Here one calls spirits of their forefathers. And thus the unfinished forefathers’ eve project at the same time transforms itself into a seance of calling the Angels. Their wings are not snow white. They are rather of the ashy, smokey grey of the ebbing souls. One needs to involve their entire inner being, their entire life force to create a vast space within oneself, a void as empty as a Siberian abyss. So empty that it sucks in. The musical core of the performance is based on Byzantine and Sardinian Paschal hymns as well as Ortodox irmoses. The premiere presentations of the performance took place at the Barbican Centre, London in September 2009, as the last part of the Gospels of Childhood triptych, shown within the POLSKA! YEAR in the UK. Anhelli Matej Matejka Ellenai/Eloe Ditte Berkeley/Kamila Klamut and Nini Julia Bang, Przemys³aw B³aszczak, Alessandro Curti, Jean François Favreau, Aleksandra Kotecka, Jaros³aw Fret, Ewa Pasikowska, Tomasz Wierzbowski Project leader Jaros³aw Fret Lighting Maciej M±dry Premiered on 15 April 2010 Running time 60 minutes  Teatr ZAR is a multinational group that was formed in Wroc³aw by apprentices of the Grotowski Institute and took shape during annual research expeditions to Georgia between 1999 and 2003. During these expeditions, the apprentices collected much musical material, including a core of centuries-old polyphonic songs that are probably the oldest forms of polyphony in the world. The name of the group, ZAR, is taken from the title of funeral songs, which in Caucasian tradition, among others in Svaneti, are the essence of singing understood as “column of sound”. Work of Teatr ZAR attempts to demonstrate that theatre does not only relate to thea (Greek for “seeing”) but it is something that above all should be heard. From such hearing, deep images are born that would be impossible to create even by means of the most modern theatre technology; where the body of a singing actor shines and emanates with the energy of sound, of the song that lies within. Performances of the company are just part of a long process of research, expeditions, personal explorations and transformation. ZAR brings back theatre as it was before art ruptured into different disciplines and styles. Its work addresses themes that, in the contemporary world, seem to be reserved only for the religious domain. It comes from conviction, influenced by Polish Romantic ideas, that art is not only complementary to religion but can fill the dynamic chasm between the everyday and transcendent life. Juliusz Osterwa, one of the greatest figures of 20th-century Polish theatre who tried to put these ideas into practice – and one whose ideas had a great impact on Jerzy Grotowski – once wrote: “God created theatre for those for whom the church does not suffice”. From 2011 the company is working on the new project Armine, Sister, dedicated to Armenian culture and realised through expeditions and studies of Armenian tradition and history. The new performance was Premiered on 28 November 2013 at the Na Grobli Studio of the Grotowski Institute in Wroc³aw. More information: www.teatrzar.art.pl Supported by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland  |