| Anhelli. The Calling |
|
Anhelli's theme is a phenomenon that Theatre needs to face in order to protect its essence and its place in this world. This is a theme of unity and disintegration of our life, our corporality, of our own selves. This is a theme of possession. Of making a vessel for the other, for a stranger's life, even a future life, out of our own selves. This is a theme of illuminating, a theme of 'over-angeling'. This is a theme 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?  Anhelli. The Calling is a performance piece composed of songs collected over many years by Teatr ZAR during its travel around Europe and expeditions to the Middle East. The group followed in the footsteps of Juliusz S³owacki, a Polish Romantic poet who, in the first half of the 19th century, travelled to the Holy Land where he wrote a poem about the Polish revolutionaries and prisoners exiled to Siberia.  The protagonist of the poem is Anhelli (S³owacki coined this name from helios, the Greek word for 'sun'), a young man who becomes the Chosen One to lead the Polish exiles out of Siberia to their fatherland. Anhelli’s journey through the vast expanses of Siberia and through death and suffering of the soldiers sentenced to penal servitude resembles passing the realms of Dante’s Inferno. On his journey Anhelli is accompanied by Angel, his soul, so he becomes the embodiment of the strongest and the best in man. Only when his beloved woman (Elenai) dies, Anhelli rejects the duty of the Chosen One and fails to lead the exiles back to their fatherland. He remains poised between life and death, unable to choose between the two. In its essence the piece is an arrangement of Byzantine and Sardinian hymns as well as Georgian and Orthodox fragments of liturgy, performed live, which take the spectator on an inner journey to the edge of the ‘non-experience of death’. In the final scene Anhelli falls repeatedly, struck by a supernatural force as he leads his comrades. After hitting the ground, the falling bodies of the men open their own graves in which they lie down to await the final answer – God. Anhelli, however, is not allowed to open his own grave – he will always remain in the space between the falling heaven and the earth, never to escape his internal exile.
Actors/Musicians ANHELLI - Matej Matejka ELLENAI/ELOE - Ditte Berkeley/Kamila Klamut AND Nini Julia Bang Przemys³aw B³aszczak Alessandro Curti Jean-François Favreau Jaros³aw Fret Aleksandra Kotecka Ewa Pasikowska Tomasz Wierzbowski PROJECT LEADER - Jaros³aw Fret LIGHTING - Bartosz Radziszewski |
||
