Artykuły

TP: You have been waiting to put on Sarah Kane's Blasted for a few years now.

MK: Following my studies, I began rehearsals for Psychosis 4.48 with Sandra Korzeniak, but we didn't have anywhere to put the play on. Later I wanted to do Blasted in Wałbrzych. But I just couldn't get a cast together there. Putting a play on really is a matter of the right circumstances coming around. If you don't get things started on the right foot; everything just falls away and it's hard to return to an idea.

Kane's original premiere in 1995 meant something very different back then from what it would mean today, twelve years later. 1995, the emergence of New Brutalism; this was a breakthrough moment in European theater and it was Blasted that largely caused this breakthrough. A revolution began - enraged critics, attacks against theaters, against the author; it was a war really. Kane destroyed the safe conventions of British theater which were heading towards farce and entertainment. Here theater was a strong, unexpected blast - not only in England - it touched people, it probably angered them, but it was a type of theater that cared.

The dangers that Kane anticipated - the idea of a bomb falling into the hotel - were , in 1995, a kind of literary or theatrical game; a way to quickly change the dramatic circumstances of the play. Of course; the inspiration was the war in Bosnia, but that war really didn't concern those of us who lived in London or Warsaw very much. Today; things have changed.

TP: You note that the play was inspired by the war in Bosnia; but Kane protested against the notion that her drama should be seen through the light of current events only. Is there any current event which is important with a view to your presentation of the play?

MK: During the rehearsals, we talked a lot about war. Anna Politkowska's 'Second Chechen War' was an inspiring book to read. Of course, Iraq, Afghanistan, and reports from the war in Bosnia. But there is no mention of a concrete war in the play. The war goes on the whole timeever since the attack on the World Trade Center, there has been a change in perception about what war is. It is still confined to certain territories, but it has become an event which can touch each of us - always. This all makes us feel like we are taking part in a world war. A person can become involved in it completely by accident. And this is what happens in the play.

TP: To what extent does this situation really effect our private lives?

MK: Of course, it is difficult to say to what extent we actually take part in it. There are fears which show up, grow, and then fade away. For example, the moment when Poland decided to send soldiers to the war in Iraq - you are suddenly living in a country which is on the map of the war and can be a target for terrorists. The matter of the anti-missile defense shield this all effects us. People walking their dogs wonder whether the Central Train Station will be attacked, or maybe the Palace of Culture. Or maybe the metro? And it is very hard to answer the question of what all this has to do with me. Will I be an accidental victim of a war that has nothing directly to do with me?

On the other hand, Kane also speaks to something else important; something you can call the butterfly effect. If we comprehend war as a kind of explosion of a sum of tensions, which we generate in our private lives, then all of these private tensions lead to the creation of a potential bomb that can explode into a full blown war. The conflict we see in the play between two people is already a war. A situation in which - in private life - in which despite our wishes, we find ourselves in the role of either victim or aggressor. And all for very banal reasons - tension, frustration - this births aggression. Physical force does not have to be there - it can be vented in words. But the sum of private conflicts can be seen as a kind of global war. Then everyone becomes partially responsible for what is happening in the world.

TP: My question about why Kane is so important to you was a question with a thesis. In your previous plays, be they Buchner or Shakespeare, you crafted a world which, in many ways, seems to be very close to what Kane sees. There are many similar elements. Is this similarity not a danger when you work on Kane herself?

MK: Maybe; I don't know. The struggle is different; because she is precise. Her precision is a surprise. I thought she was a very emotional person and I thought that this emotion, this sensitivity, caused her to fall under the spell of fascination as a writer - fascination with joy or fear. But it's not this way at all. So long as I've been working on this play, hammering away at the text, that I've found it to be extremely rigorous. And this is a real challenge for me. There is almost no room for directing here. There is something similar in Beckett, where all you really need are two good actors.

It's hard to come to terms with the pressure of certain images in Kane. For example; Ian's head is sticking out through the floor. This image appears on the cover of the play, it is an element of each performance of it, almost like the tree in Waiting for Godot. I rebel against the pressure of these pictures, but they are a two edged sword. Resigning from something, I must find an equally powerful alternative, or even a justification for my choice. But on the other hand, to give in to the pressure would be too easy.

The problem then, is to enter the structure of the play, divide it and understand itand put it back together. On the other hand, I'm interested in finding a space outside of the context of the drama - in people. I am able to imagine English actors performing this play; above all they speak the dialogues very quickly, they don't look for some internal motivation for the dialogue. What is important is the rhythm, not the istuation. The play is an emotional rollercoaster. A Polish actor needs space and a different, internal time to make these states more real.

The play begins in the convention of realistic drama, but this convention is soon abandoned. Kane said, in her interviews, that the first part is realistic, and the next part - "more realistic." How are we to understand this? Take for example the scene in which the body of the dead baby is eaten. One German performance of the play made it hyper realistic; adding even the sound of breaking bones - this makes the audience stop watching the play and start wondering "how did they do that?" and "what is the actor eating?" This is not something you want the audience thinking. On the other hand you have the explosion of the bomb. If you make the explosion a matter of convention - as they did in the premiere, which was low budget; where they just made one of the walls cave into - then this wouldn't make sense. This is, I hope, a challenge that Kane put towards theater. How can theater make this event meaningful for the audience?

Kane always said that this drama is very optimistic. And if you read the text up to the end, then indeed it is. The picture of two people sharing gin and sausage; and the last word "thank you." Only people can cause war - and only people can end it. Every war is a failure of humanity, a complete rejection of everything that makes us human. But every ending of a war is a triumph.