The Ruhr Archipelago

Łukasz Drewniak writes about ARETEIA by Grzegorza Jarzyny, staged at Schauspiel Essen as a part of the European Odyssey project.

Łukasz Drewniak, DZIENNIK GAZETA PRAWNA

“Areteia”, a new performance directed by Grzegorz Jarzyna, is a part of the European Odyssey project. The journey, brought to the audience by six theaters from the Ruhr area, takes two intense days. The viewers watch three performances every day, they visit postindustrial halls turned into museums and cultural centers.

Almost 400 viewers following the footsteps of Odysseus are put up at the homes of voluntaries, look for reference points in the postindustrial metropolis, witnesses the unveiling myth described by a Hungarian, Peter Nadas, by Roland Schimmelpfenning, by a Turk Emine Sevgi Özdamar, a British Enda Walsh, an Austrian Christoph Ransmayr. And last but not least by Grzegorz Jarzyna.

The journey starts with the performance in Grillo Theater, Essen. And right from the start there is a surprise; the Polish director is not at all interested in Odysseus’s journey, but in his return home. In the text, the author admits having been inspired by Wyspiański's play. In the performance in which one can hear a stylistic echo of T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T. and feel the mood so close to Jarzyna performances in Vienna, there are four Polish actors: Katarzyna Herman (Penelope) and Sandra Korzeniak, Marcin Czarnik and Jan Peszek as the gods of Olympus. “Welcome to Odysseus’ dream”, says Jarzyna starting the oneiric vision. Athene (Korzeniak), dressed in masculine clothes stands over the sleeping hero, her hair short and black, a suit and bare feet. We can hear her melodious, weeping voice that cracks every now and then, “Odysseus, Odysseus, Odysseus.” Does she want to wake him up or mesmerize him? This disturbing doubt remains with the viewer throughout the play. We do not know whether Jarzyna's gods are good or evil. They speak a strange language. It sounds like deformed Greek, sometimes like Hungarian. Finally, it becomes clear that this is Polish, except each word is pronounced backwards. Peszek, Czarnik and Korzeniak tempt and lure the hero with unintelligible words, they sing to him inside his head and soul. In one of the scenes, Athene (Korzeniak) takes the shape of Penelope. The winged feet of Merkury (Peszek) are really an aging dancer’s feet. Czarnik as Zeus speaks with electronically distorted voice of a fantasy film ghost; there is something barbarian and primordial in him.

Everything that we see on the stage is nothing more but Odysseus’ nightmare, a ghastly premonition of what his real return home might be like. Gods tempt him or maybe they try to warn him? You will never escape from your fate; if you return home, all that you are just dreaming about will come true. Jarzyna’ s Odysseus looks a bit like a sailor or a hobo, perhaps even as an ex-convict on his way home once his sentences has been served. And, like in Wyspiański’s play, he returns to Ithaca infected by evil. The journey has not been a catharsis, crime continues to be part of his nature. Andreas Grothgar does not fit the elegant world of crème de crème who are enjoying themselves on the stage. The tuxedos, the evening gowns, the changing colors of the walls; the shadows and silhouettes frozen as a living tableau somewhere deep inside the stage; the show of a guitarist instead of the blind aoidos’ song; Telemach playing squash. Jarzyna tantalizes us with images of stability and happiness which appeared in Ithaca while Odysseus was gone. Penelope’s unrestfulness, her sorrows and suffering start once she has finally recognized her husband. Odysseus, the pariah, cannot become part of her world, he can only look at it, overhear it, destroy with words and eventually annihilate it. In Jarzyna’s play, it is not the suitors who bring about perdition. Odysseus puts the blame on his father. "What has happened to my brothers?", he asks Laertes. "You have no brothers", replies his father. And it is not clear whether it is Odysseus who forgot, or is it Laertes who renounces his other children. The finale involves a triple murder: dead bodies of the guests, Odysseus’s knife reaches Laertes, and Telemach who witnesses the murder kills Odysseus. The son kills the father who kills his father. Jarzyna returns to the old patricide obsessions from the “Celebration". Crime may constitute a foundation of scenic world or it may be a warning against it. In the epilogue, we can hear Athene’s sticky voice, “Nothing has really happened yet, but it may, just like in the dream."
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The authors of the Ruhr project wanted to show „Odyssey" as a journey across the world in-between. The world is between the cities; the empty spaces, the degraded areas stretching endlessly seem to confirm the thesis that theaters in Ruhr are like islands. The journey across the Ruhr, a German metropolis consisting of fifty-three towns, leaves the travelers with an impression that they are wandering a region which is desperately looking for its identity (...) If the project was meant to be a kind of competition, then Jarzyna is the winner. His performance surpassed the others and, judging by the reactions of German audience and critics, it was the strongest point of the project.