'Festen' is the 'Hamlet' of our times, controversial Polish director Grzegorz Jarzyna tells Belinda Mckeon
It's Saturday night in the centre of Warsaw. An excitable crowd is piling down the long street of Marszalkowksa, into the foyer of the Tr Warszawa, known until its recent renaming as the Rozmaitosci theatre. This crowd is eager for tickets for tonight's penultimate performance of Hamlet and, as curtain time draws closer, it's clear many of them are set for disappointment. But the queue continues to build, even though the box office is readying the "closed" signs.
The buzz is not surprising - this is Hamlet through the eyes of the controversial director, Krzysztof Warlikowski, a version in which the unhinged prince confronts his horrified mother in the nude.
In Ireland, a foyer packed with a crowd this young could only be found in a cinema. In a 200-strong throng, people over 40, even 30, are the exception rather than the rule. There are glammed-up young couples on dates, lively groups of friends, even packs of teenage boys - and not a frazzled literature teacher in sight. It's a striking scene, throwing the problems of audience expansion and development experienced by Irish theatres into sharp relief.
But it's something to which Grzegorz Jarzyna, the theatre's celebrated artistic director, has grown accustomed. Jarzyna, who took up the helm five years ago, at the age of 30, is at once a critical and a popular favourite, remarked upon not only for the serious directorial talent evident in such productions as Mann's Doctor Faustus, Sarah Kane's 4:48 Psychosis, and the Dostoyevsky-inspired The Prince Myshkin, but for his aloof identity - he adopts a different pseudonym for each of his productions, and has been known variously as Sylwia Torsh, Horst d'Albertis and H7 - his edgy looks and for the urbane style with which he has imbued the cavernous spaces of the Warszawa.
The theatre over which he presides enjoys a strange double identity - achingly hip yet undeniably important, the place to be seen yet also the the birthplace of contemporary Polish theatre. Jarzyna's frequently provocative, often notorious stage has assumed the task of nurturing the art out of its post-communist thaw, and drawing it out of its limiting political apparatus.
In the spaces broken open by the Warszawa, that rare beast in contemporary Poland - original new writing - has tentatively begun to emerge. "The new writing has only really started one year ago," Jarzyna explains in his office, a quirky blend of heavy antique furniture and surreal posters depicting bruised limbs and painted faces. "And it is concerning itself with the problem of young people, with the exploration of young people, not with the old problems of communism and poverty. Because young people are cut off, really, from what was in the past. This new writing is not so widespread but it's growing slowly."
It's from this tension between respect for the past and responsibility for the future that Jarzyna's work has always taken its drive. Though his appointment to his current post was lauded by many in 1999, coming in the wake of three hugely successful productions, including Brad Fraser's Unidentified Human Remains, his arrival on the Warsaw theatre scene put noses out of joint, and led, within months, to his sacking from the Warszawa post by the then-manager of the theatre. "He was the typical communist-style director who was only thinking of how to take the money from the theatre," Jarzyna says now. "I came and I had these new ideas, and I was too ambitious for him. I wanted to change the administrative structure, because I felt there was needed more passion for the theatre among all the staff. And I was thrown out."
Within four months, however, the city president had ordered Jarzyna's reinstatement - a turnaround which, he points out, owed much to the furore created by a supportive national press.
"We don't have a very good relationship with the politicians," he explains, pointing to the lack of a separate government body to distribute and regulate revenue for cultural activity in Poland. "But we have a good relationship with the media. They really care about such things; new writing, young artists. One newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, has a really strong section on the arts and a very good open-minded approach, and it has a strong influence on the politics of what people think about the arts, and on what happens in the theatre itself. When this newspaper pays attention, immediately something happens."
Jarzyna may feel confident of having the media on his side, but as he talks about theatre directors "excommunicating" actors for daring to moonlight on the Warszawa stage, it's clear the antagonism between his theatre and the older, Warsaw houses still has some distance left to run.
"Because a couple of years ago we did Mark Ravenhill's Shopping and Fucking and Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis, other companies still say about us that we are the theatre of the sperm and the naked ass. They say that we are the hairdresser theatre, caring only about our dress; they call us trendy, nothing more; empty."
The tension stems, he explains, from the co-existence in Warsaw of two very different schools of acting and directing - the Drama Academy of his own alma mater, Cracow, its highbrow style heavily influenced by the work of the avant-garde masters Tadeusz Kantor and Jerzy Grotowski, and Warsaw's own, more commercially-oriented National Theatre Academy. For Jarzyna, there is no contest.
"In all the more traditional theatres in Warsaw, you see very famous actors onstage. And the actors which follow are copies of them, learning the tricks and way of acting that belongs to 20 or 30 years ago. But in Cracow, because it is outside this scene, you don't have this negative impact. From the very beginning, when we came here from Cracow, me and other directors and actors, we attacked the Warsaw theatre society. We knew that we were not welcome. But it's a good tension, because it allows us to make our theatre so strong."
Perhaps ironically, the production which has been hailed as Jarzyna's strongest yet, and which has sealed internationally his status as the voice of the Warsaw scene, is also his most traditional, both formally and thematically. His Festen, first produced two years ago, is one of several stage versions of the stunningly memorable Dogme film, in which a formal family gathering is shattered by a revelation of child sexual abuse. Jarzyna's production closely follows the structure of the film - because, he explains, it was close to being a piece of theatre as it stood.
"When I saw the film, I thought, it's a Hamlet for the contemporary times. But it also takes place over the course of about eight hours in one space, and focuses on one subject, Christian the son. And I thought, the construction of this film scenario is the construction of the Greek theatre. Such good dynamic scenarios, such good dialogues. And it allows you to explore more the psychological area of the theatre, to look, in close-up, at the actors, to really catch the eye of the audience. And the reaction of the audience is much more emotional, and deeper. They are much more touched by this performance'.
Jarzyna is proud of the fact that the emotions into which a work such as Festen thrust an audience can be far from comfortable; in a society which still routinely turns a blind eye to sexual abuse, he feels contemporary theatre assumes a role of sedition and exposure.
"We are a very Christian country," he says of Poland. "And nobody wanted to touch this problem. But this is changing now. The very first information about child sexual abuse by a priest was published in the newspaper the day before the production opened in Warsaw. Nobody believed it, but then there came more and more stories."
Jarzyna believes the play travels well - it has already had a successful run in Avignon and at Sadler's Wells, London - not simply because it bears a theme which is, unfortunately, universal in its affliction, but because its impact is primarily an emotional one.
"There is this impact, even if you don't understand the language. Even with subtitles, many times people say that they stopped reading the subtitles because they 'feel' what is going on. And that is the difference with Polish theatre. It is not intellectual, not cold and beautifully conceptual like German theatre. It's much more warm; the barrier is down between the audience and the actors. And that is why this theatre, Tr Warszawa, has had the chance it did."
His plans for the theatre's future involve capitalising on that chance - he feels strongly that he has a responsibility to develop the emerging theatre of Poland in a structured way. An exemplary project, which will comprise much of the theatre's activity in Warsaw this year, sees training and support offered to young writers and directors in exchange for voluntary production and performance of new work, under the auspices of the Warszawa, in a variety of unconventional venues around the city.
Though Jarznya is one of the younger European directors, he talks of a responsibility to hand on the mantle. "My situation here has stabilised, now it's time to be thinking about the new perspective. In Poland, it is always everybody thinking that we have to get the money from the state or the town and then we can work. But that is my challenge. But I want to show the young artists that they can make theatre by themselves. To give them the freedom."
Festen, directed by Grzegorz Jarznya, runs at the Abbey from January 28th to 31st