In the newly built building of the puppet theater, viewers will not only be able to watch interesting performances,
but also visit the puppet museum, full of characters brought to life on stage by real masters of this profession over the years. One of the cabinets hosted the characters of an unconventional staging of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (premiered on February 12, 1995), prepared by Anna Proszkowska under the direction of Waldemar Matuszewski and Jan Tomaszewicz. In an interview with Anna Tokarska, the director explained what audience she intended to reach:
The addressee of this realization is, above all, young people who are used to the video-clip technique, so we want to introduce them to the world of poetry and great literature. We hope to interest the adult viewer as well. We mean condensation, about conveying the content and message of art contained in words, transposed into a vision, into the language of image. We want to preserve the essence, concreteness, reject poetic descriptiveness, from which it would be difficult for a young viewer to pick out a complicated plot.
Janusz R. Kowalczyk reviewed the play in Rzeczpospolita:
It's really not hard to stage Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream once again. The art of doing it in a new and non-stereotypical way. Just like the director Anna Proszkowska did on the stage of the Lubuski Theater in Zielona Góra.
Apart from directing, Anna Proszkowska also teaches. He is a professor at the PWST in Wrocław, for ten years he has been collaborating with the Pandora Theater in Finland and teaches at the theater school in Turku near Helsinki. She is a specialist in acting tasks in a puppet set, she deals with the technique of playing with a Java puppet. Her experiences resulted in a performance in Zielona Góra, which we had the opportunity to see in Warsaw.
It would be difficult to precisely define the type of spectacle proposed by Proszkowska in A Midsummer Night's Dream. It is not a puppet theater in the strict sense of the word, nor is it dramatic. It is rather a theater of visual forms, in which performers of the "living set" also play. Actors use different means of expression. Matter, an object is for them a special means of expression, equivalent to the body. Therefore, the role of stage design by Grażyna Chrzanowska-Skała, with fanciful effigies, masks and large stained-glass representations of rival art deities: Titania and Oberon, cannot be overestimated.
In this one-and-a-half-hour spectacle, seven artists create three or four roles, which forces the actors to perform special gymnastics, both physical (wearing and animating dolls-puppets taller than human figures, quick changes of masks) and mental (constant metamorphosis of voice and gesture with frequent character changes). Ludwik Schiller, for example, is sometimes Aegeus, sometimes Lysander, sometimes a knock or a pipe. The hanging portraits of Titania and Oberon are “animated” by pulsating flashes of spotlights – an excellent effect that turns the theater into… a temple – and statements by Maria Weigelt (also playing Hipolita) and Marek Szczęsny (also Demetriusz and Podszewka) flowing from the loudspeakers. This performer was responsible for the creations of characters from all three levels of A Midsummer Night's Dream: gods, aristocracy and craftsmen.
The spectacle – thanks to the unique artistic beauty of the puppets and masks (although reminiscent of the already classic achievements in this respect of the stage designers of the Krakow Theater of Puppets and Masks Groteska: Kazimierz Mikulski and Jerzy Skarżyński), thanks to the even level of performance of an efficient ensemble and the music of Waldemar Wróblewski, which is organically inscribed in the rhythm of the performance – one watches with a real pleasure of communing with the phenomenon of art captivating with the charming, fresh charm of youth. And what more is the theater about...
Love writes the same script over and over again for the theater of lovers who are playthings in the hands of a power higher than them, wrote Danuta Piekarska in "Gazeta Lubuska". – Like puppets animated by actors' hands, but not of their own free will: the mystery of love is also expressed through the material of this performance. There is joy in it, there is humor, there is poetry and magic. […] Those who are tired of being awake should immerse themselves in this "Dream": it has something of May rain in it.
In May 1995, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" took part in the 2nd Rzeszów Outdoor Meetings, aimed at integrating theatrical performances into the city's monuments. It was presented in the evening in the courtyard of the Lubomirski Castle, remembering the times close to those in which Shakespeare lived. On the way back, "Dream..." visited Krakow, where - as Andrzej Buck recalls - "it appeared in a theater space full of beautiful old trees growing in Jordan Park". It was also played in the ruins of the former transformer station, which used to be located in the courtyard of the Lubuski Theatre.
Sources:
A. Buck, “Theatre of the Little Homeland. Sketches for the history of the Lubuski Theater in Zielona Góra 1951-2010”, Zielona Góra 2018.
J.R. Kowalczyk, "Dream of animate forms", "Rzeczpospolita", September 1, 1995.
D. Piekarska, "Love Psychodrama", "Gazeta Lubuska" 1995, No. 42.
A. Tokarska, "In the power of the magic circle" [interview with A. Proszkowska], [in:] "A Midsummer Night's Dream" [program], edited by A. Buck and A. Tokarska, Zielona Góra 1995.
(elaborated by pp)
Creators:
Author: William Shakespeare
Translation: Stanislaw Baranczak
Directed by Anna Proszkowska
Scenography and puppet designs: Grażyna Chrzanowska-Skała
Music: Waldemar Wróblewski
Music preparation: Wiktor Sędziński
Cast:
Małgorzata Król (Hipolita, Titania, Helena)
Beata Sobicka (Hermia, Elf, Framuga)
Artur Beling (Demetrius, Oberon, Lining)
Ludwik Schiller (Aegeus, Lysander, Puk, Piszczała)
Jerzy Lamenta (Kloc)
Premiere: February 12, 1995
Photos: Waldemar Szmidt
