Plotless in Wartime: Currents of Polish-Ukrainian Theater in Poland, February 24, 2022-Present

• In Event: Liberation from Plot in Dance, Film, and Theater

Abstract

This paper maps Nico Israel’s fertile construct “Esperantic Modernism” onto influential concepts taken from Meyerhold and Kantor to discuss women’s and Jewish experimental theater in Poland today. Body as energy, mannikin, gesture, soundscape, object, and portable space of associative resonance inform theatrical productions that respond to war and the threat of cultural annihilation with an immediacy of the experiential that takes precedence over emplotment. In my discussion I draw on: Rear View, a film about Ukrainian refugees by Maciek Hamela who drove their rescue van; the black comedy A Kitten Peed on My Banner, co-created and performed by Ukrainian and Polish actors, Krystyna Janda’s live/photo-collaged monodrama Notes from Exile, and Agnieszka Przepriórska’s pioneering form of women’s “biotheater” in The Gypsy.

Author

• Monika Greenleaf, Stanford U