The Peter Brook production of Beckett’s FRAGMENTS lived up to my very, very high expectations. Brook does so much with so little. His minimalist, understated, actor-driven directing reminds me of my teacher T from Harvard-Westlake. It was like coming home, seeing his work again. He’s so good. He only keeps getting better. I can’t hype him enough.
Category Archives: Poland
be careful what you wish for
cause it might come true. More new posts. Today, I sat two feet away from Schechner while he talked to us for an hour about Grotowski. Tonight, Brook.
good morning
I haven’t posted pictures yet because I have discovered that the little bag containing all my computer cables except my charger – but my phone/computer synchronizing cable, Ipod/computer sync cable, camera/computer sync cable, etc – was also taken with the wallet and cell phone. Arrgh.
I am starting to feel great about the wallet having been stolen. It makes me feel more like I am part of Poland, or like the country is somehow welcoming us all back, albeit in kind of a “Welcome to Poland! You’re screwed!” way.
And G was telling me, yesterday, that he has had his wallet stolen from him in multiple countries, even when it was in the front pocket of his jeans. He travels expecting that that may happen, and only takes essentials out with him. Not a bad idea, and makes me feel less like a dumb tourist. G’s very experienced and travels all the time. If he can get hoodwinked, I’m not going to worry about it.
ok,
I have new posts up on the US Artists Initiative weblog including one about the experience at the synagogue.
This afternoon after our session ended, I got to wander a little bit in the alleys behind the Square. I am starting to feel like I know my way around here a bit, after one week. It’s nice. I am not so lost. I wonder if it’s really because I know the geography better now, or if going to the services this morning helped me be comfortable with being here. I felt like my head was screwed on straight for the first time since arriving.
More theater tonight.
I just want to say
that T and I went to services at the Wroclaw synagogue this morning. It was amazing. More soon on that. And my roommate, who is wonderful, just gave me money, coffee, and advice, all of which are good. And tonight I get to see three plays in one night, again.
Yes.
in which I don’t see a play, for a change
My parents told me, when I spoke to them on the phone, that I don’t need to spend this entire trip thinking about WWII, and that I am, in effect, “continuing something that never should have been disrupted” – that is, the presence of Jews in Poland.
Even their names now appearing in the database of the Polish police system is somehow part of that return. We have not been eliminated from history, from Europe, or from Poland. I found this very uplifting and shared it with some of my friends here at the conference, and they agreed that it was a good way to look back and forward.
But today, my policy of “I’m not going to read anything about what these plays are beforehand so that I am a completely surprised audience member” backfired when I learned, two minutes before curtain, that this evening’s play was by Sarah Kane, and all about concentration camps. I turned in my ticket at the door and walked back to my housing.
I saw no reason to go into that theater when the reality of that story is all around me. I didn’t come to Poland to see someone else’s representation of my family’s history. I came to make my own.
So I’m at home tonight. Maybe it’s good to have one evening without a play.
all the way back
My friend T, who I spent the whole bus ride to Michalowice with yesterday, has been to Poland with her father before, specifically to visit the camps. I told her I had no intention of doing that.
“Well,” she said, “I did it so you don’t have to.”
But as we doubled back to Legnica, she told me that we passed a sign pointing to one, anyway.
“You can’t avoid them,” she said. “They’re everywhere.”
T and I have been talking lots about what it feels like to be an American Jew on this trip. I’m glad she’s here, because I really needed someone to share all this with. In the course of the conversation, I learned that she’s also a Los Angeles Valley Girl, went to high school just a few years apart from me, and in many other ways has a parallel background to mine. We’ve worked together for a year without knowing this.
I guess it takes coming all the way back to Poland to figure out who your countrymen really are.
California, can you hear me now? I know that over half of your residents don’t believe in gay marriage, and I know that probably the same over-half would like to deport undocumented immigrants and their children. I know. But compared to the world I see here, which is, I know, a world of the past, but still a world I and T cannot avoid seeing – you look, Home State, like the paradise you always make yourself out to be.
wood on the stones
One more thing before I go out to call my parents, the credit bureaus, and my cell phone company. As I was walking out of the Rynek supermarket on the Square, my arms full of toilet paper, laundry detergent, Q-tips, Kleenex, and a bag of rusks for midnight snacks, I saw a pile of wood shavings on the stones.
I looked up, and saw an old man, his face deeply sunburned, carving a wooden head of Christ by hand. To his right was a pile of other icons and images – saints, crucifixes, Holy Families – all carved in wood, all beautifully detailed and handmade. His face had as many lines in it as there were shavings of wood on the stones.
It is always good to see an artisan at work. I don’t know why we like that so much. Maybe because it gives us the illusion that we might be so useful ourselves – that our hands might make things, that our minds’ ideas might be midwived by our fingers into wood and stone and embodied objects. (I am avoiding saying “flesh” on purpose.)
But this image was more troubling to me than inspiring – I thought immediately of the Jews of Poland, again, and wondered what it would have been like walking through this same Wroclaw Market Square, past a man carving the head of Christ in wood, five hundred years ago. Would it have been safe? I wouldn’t have wanted to be a Jew here then, or two hundred years ago, or in 1937. I’m not sure that I really want to be a Jew here now.
see what I see
Inside, the light switches are large, the size of Post-It notes. One room is red and one is green. The kitchen is narrow. The windows stretch from floor to ceiling. Something about every object, every dimension is different. I can’t forget that I am here.
Outside, there is graffiti on the walls of tall buildings, and a tram stop round the corner, covered in trees. Behind the tram stop is a towering wide building with the crowned eagle on the front. The sky is dark, very dark. As you ride the tram towards Market Square, you start passing one extraordinary building after another. And once you get out and walk, you forget that cars ever existed. It’s a square made for people. Some of the alleys behind the main square, it feels like you have to turn sideways to walk through them. There are cars, but they navigate with great difficulty. Hundreds and hundreds of people are everywhere you look.
Every day, it is warm and sunny, and every night, rain comes torrentially and suddenly. You can see the clouds moving.
in brief,
Yesterday, I ran around Wroclaw, going to and from my housing and the Institute so many times that I finally drummed it into my head how to get from one to the other. If you keep turning around to look at the architecture, you get lost a lot. I got lost a lot.
The Market Square is very large and linear on the outside, but on the inside, is a convoluted mass of alleys. Little shops spring up behind every corner. When people try to give you directions from one place to another, they stand up and move in several different directions, like the Turtle in Logo.
Today, I stayed in and finished my presentation, and had a chance to answer email for the first time since getting here. One last breath before it all starts. Tomorrow, the conference begins.
I have new blog posts up on the USAI site – you can see the schedule of events there too, and a list of all the participants in the US Artists Initiative.
Dara Weinberg 