Kantor Downtown is Polski Theatre in Bydgoszcz's project running in the year of Tadeusz Kantor's hundredth birthday, thirty six years after the first showing of Umarła klasa in La MaMa theatre in New York City.
It's an installation inspired by Tadeusz Kantor's characters, Ellen Stewart - legendary manager of LaMaMa theatre, and American artists who were a part of the avant-garde sceene in New York in the 70's and 80's. The installation was born out of the need to restore the memory and "rituals of Rented Island", as a film maker and performer Jack Smith called Lower Manhattan where underground art was blooming. It's also about proving that counter-culture is a common legacy, one that is above continental borders and that going back to the avant-garde from the past is necessary to build its alternatives in modern culture and public discourse. Tadeusz Kantor's (a truly modernictic artist) character is being inscribed in a colorful, anarchistic, subversive, queer, feministic artistic traditions of Downtown New York. The installation has been made to look at Kantor in a different way than before - it's supposed to showcase him as an artist in a realistic and virtual dialogue with other creators. It's to serve as a critical (as well as nostalgic) reflection on Polish and American avant-garde. Referring to the iconic scene from Umarła klasa - the classroom in which the manequins are sitting, the characters living in the memory, the shadows of those who have passed away - the creators of this installation page the world of avant-garde performace and experimental theatre unevitably becoming a part of the past and make it stay in the frame. That doesn't mean they are not aware of how much this world, its language, aesthetics and politics are needed in modern theatre.
Joanna Krakowska
KANTORTheatre-hybrid. Fascinating. (Theodora Skipitares)No particularisms. He took everything that was local and turned it into things universal. (Ozzie Rodriguez)Kantor? Theatre about the Holocaust. (Lee Breuer)Kantor? He was a clown. (Lola Pashalinski)He had something to do with Butoh. (Linda Chapman)He used to scare me to death. (George Ferencz)Umarła klasa? It's about people with no impact. Everywhere, always. (Jill Godmilow)What connects Kantor and Jack Smith? They both created their own cosmologies. (Penny Arcade)DOWNTOWNThe whole energy is supposed to be used to fight the system. This is my stand. (Lee Breuer)There is no theatre that wouldn't be political. (Ellie Covan)It's difficult to create art if you can't afford to pay your rent. (Theodora Skipitares)The rule is obvious: art is not a product, and product is not art. (Penny Arcade)Avant-garde? It's knives and pop. (Lola Pashalinski)Whatever we did, we would always break some law. (Ozzie Rodriguez)
The installation was created by:
Jolanta Janiczak, Joanna Krakowska, Magda Mosiewicz and Wiktor Rubin
Spektakl bierze udział w 22. Ogólnopolskim Konkursie na Wystawienie Polskiej Sztuki Współczesnej
