The Art and Theater of Tadeusz Kantor - Screenings of Kantor's work

Tue Nov 4 16:06:24 UTC 2008

Dear SEELANGers,

If you're in the New York area, please come to the following series of
screenings of Tadeusz Kantor's theater work in the Annex Theatre at La
MaMa E.T.C. from November 10 through 16. The screenings will each be
introduced by a specialist and are a unique occasion to view Kantor's work
en masse and in an original space (each of the performances was staged in
the Annex Theatre between 1979 and 1991).

The series is part of a three-part program of events sponsored by the
Polish Cultural Institute. It includes the exhibition of Kantor's
installation THE DESK (1975) at The Jewish Museum as part of the exhbition
THEATERS OF MEMORY: ART AND THE HOLOCAUST (November 9, 2008 - February 1,
2009), as well as a one-day conference at the Martin E. Segal Theater
Center at CUNY Graduate Center on January 26, 2009.

Below is a detailed schedule of the screenings. More information on the
entire program and on the Polish Cultural Insitute's activities can be
found online at http://www.polishculture-nyc.org.

Bill Martin

Literature Programmer
Polish Cultural Institute

KANTOR AT LA MAMA - SCHEDULE AND DESCRIPTIONS

NOVEMBER 10-16, 2008, 7:30 PM

La MaMa E.T.C., The Annex
74 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003
Admission: $10, $8 students, All Kantor Pass $40. Tel. 212.475.7710

*

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2008, 7:30 PM

Tadeusz Kantor, Dead Class / Umarla klasa, 1975, film dir. Andrzej Wajda,
TVP S.A. 1976, 72 min., in Polish with English subtitles

Introduced by Ellen Stewart, director of La MaMa E.T.C.

Acclaimed filmmaker Andrzej Wajda documents the "hair-raising spectacle"
of Kantor's most famous work Dead Class, which won an Obie Award for its
1979 performance at La Mama. Here, in the crucible of Krakow's
Krzysztofory Gallery, where the work premiered, Kantor incites and
conducts the psychosis at the core of personal and collective memory
– memory shaped in this case by the traumas of two World Wars, the
Holocaust, and the eradication of the Jewish part of Polish culture
– and he pushes his avant-garde poetic into its final phase, the
"Theatre of Death." Dead Class was an immediate sensation. Named by
critics a ‘total’ work of art, flocked to by audiences around
the world, it and Cricot 2 Theatre immediately entered the annals of the
avant-garde. This production was presented twice at La Mama: in February
1979 and June 1991.

*

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2008, 7:30 PM

Tadeusz Kantor, Wielopole, Wielopole, 1980, film dir. Andrzej Sapija,
WFO & PE – Educational Film Studio in Lodz 1984, 68 min., in Polish
with English subtitles

Film introduced and discussion moderated by: tba.

Kantor continues his confrontation with memory, the past, base substance,
and the limits of the imagination, summoning the spirits of his own
childhood circa World War I in the Galician village of Wielopole. In this,
his most evidently autobiographical work, Kantor attempts to release the
secret of experience by generating collisions between the sacred and the
everyday, between the real and its remembered doubles. Kantor presented
this production at La Mama in May 1982.

Tadeusz Kantor, cricotage: Where Are the Snows of Yesteryear / Gdzie sa
niegdysiejsze sniegi… / Où sont les neiges d’antan? 1979,
film dir. Andrzej Sapija, WFO & PE – Educational Film Studio in
Lodz, Ministry of Foreign Affairs 1984, 33 min., in Polish with English
subtitles

This minimalist cricotage was created by the Cricot 2 Theatre between the
productions Dead Class and Wielopole, Wielopole and premiered in 1979 in
Rome. Departing from an enigmatic scene in S. I. Witkiewicz's Lovelies and
Dowdies, the work shifts between performative modes and plays with notions
of plot and action, body and object, and structures of interaction between
humans and between humans and things. An excellent example of the
cricotage form developed by Kantor, it was filmed during its presentation
at the Stodola Student Club in Warsaw in 1984.

*

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2008, 7:30 PM

Tadeusz Kantor, Let the Artists Die / Niech szczezna artysci, 1985, film
dir. Stanislaw Zajaczkowski, OTV – Krakow 1986, 77 min., in Polish
with English subtitles

Film introduced and discussion moderated by Richard Schechner, Professor
of Performance Studies, NYU; editor of TDR: The Drama Review; founder and
artistic director of East Coast Artists.

Here, Kantor again recombines elements of autobiography, mainly from his
youth in interwar Poland, but distills the mechanism of memory into
principles of reflection, reversal, and coincidence. With these he ranges
over the invisible threshold of reality and art, making of the Room of
memory the "boundary of the mirror which marks the beginning of an
extension of reality and the time of poetry," as Kantor himself indicated.
Kantor presented this production at La Mama in October 1985.

*

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2008, 7:30 PM

Tadeusz Kantor, I Shall Never Return / Nigdy tu juz nie powroce, 1988,
film dir. Andrzej Sapija, TVP S.A. 1990, 81 min., in Polish with English
subtitles

Film introduced and discussion moderated by Daniel Gerould, Professor of
Theatre and Comparative Literature, CUNY Graduate Center. Editor and
translator of The Witkiewicz Reader.

Greater attention is paid in this fourth work of Kantor's "Theatre of
Death" to fundamental elements of theater and to poetic process. The work
reflects both its three predecessors and the dialectical nature of his
artistic journey. Here, Kantor returns to his wartime production The
Return of Odysseus, which is set in the ruined memory machine. The artist
pronounces a moving manifesto about the processes of creation and of
passing away. The performance ends with the great emballage of the end of
the 20th century to the sounds of Berlioz's Rakoczy March, the objects and
figures from the theatre wrapped in black fabric. Kantor presented this
production at La Mama in June 1988, and it was La MaMa director, Ellen
Stewart, who gave it its title.

*

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2008, 7:30 PM

Tadeusz Kantor, Today is My Birthday / Dzis sa moje urodziny, 1991, film
dir. Stanislaw Zajaczkowski, OTV - Krakow 1991, 77 min., in Polish with
English subtitles

Film introduced and discussion moderated by Krystyna Illakowicz, Ph.D.,
Lecturer, Slavic Languages & Literatures, Yale University

Premiering only a few weeks after his death, Kantor's final work, like the
others, was to have had the director present on stage, contemplating and
controlling a palimpsest of images (figured by three large picture
frames). Congealed around his absence, the work explores and inhabits the
relation between image, imagination, and memory, and has been described by
Stephen Holden as "a turbulent, living painting that hits the spectator
with devastating force." With Ellen Stewart's encouragement, Cricot 2
Theatre performed the work worldwide until 1992; it appeared at La Mama in
June 1991.

*

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2008, 7:30 PM

Tadeusz Kantor, Dead Class / Umarla klasa, 1975, film dir. Andrzej Wajda,
TVP S.A. 1976, 72 min., in Polish with English subtitles

Film introduced and discussion moderated by Magda Romanska, Assistant
Professor and Head of Theatre Studies at Emerson College

Acclaimed filmmaker Andrzej Wajda documents the "hair-raising spectacle"
of Kantor's most famous work Dead Class, which won an Obie Award for its
1979 performance at LaMama. Here, in the crucible of Krakow's Krzysztofory
Gallery, where the work premiered, Kantor incites and conducts the
psychosis at the core of personal and collective memory – memory
shaped in this case by the traumas of two World Wars, the Holocaust, and
the eradication of the Jewish part of Polish culture – and he pushes
his avant-garde poetic into its final phase, the "Theatre of Death." Dead
Class was an immediate sensation. Named by critics a ‘total’
work of art, flocked to by audiences in over 150 cities around the world,
it and Cricot 2 Theatre immediately entered the annals of the
avant-garde.This production was presented twice at La Mama: in February
1979 and June 1991.

*

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2008, 7:30 PM

7:30 PM  Tadeusz Kantor, Today is My Birthday / Dzis sa moje urodziny,
1991, film dir. Stanislaw Zajaczkowski, OTV - Krakow 1991, 77 min., in
Polish with English subtitles

Premiering only a few weeks after his death, Kantor's final work, like the
others, was to have had the director present on stage, contemplating and
controlling a palimpsest of images (figured by three large picture
frames). Congealed around his absence, the work explores and inhabits the
relation between image, imagination, and memory, and has been described by
Stephen Holden as "a turbulent, living painting that hits the spectator
with devastating force." With Ellen Stewart's encouragement, Cricot 2
Theatre presented this work performed the work worldwide until 1992; it
appeared at La Mama in June 1991.

9:00 PM  Tadeusz Kantor – The Inspired Tyrant / Tadeusz Kantor.
Natchniony Tyran, dir. Andrzej Bialko, Verlag für Moderne Kunst Nürnberg
1997, 39 min., in Polish and German with English subtitles

This short documentary explores the idea of Tadeusz Kantor’s Theatre
of Death, with original footage of Kantor himself and comments by Polish
and German specialists on his work, including Andrzej Wajda and Kantor's
wife and actress Maria Stangret-Kantor.

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