La Luna
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For the past 15 years Zygmunt Dyrkacz has been presenting international experimental theater at the scrappy Chopin Theatre, including performances by Poland’s astonishing Teatr Cogitatur. Despite more than two decades of international acclaim, the troupe had never appeared in this country until Dyrkacz brought it here to present Aztec Hotel in 2003. Its most recent nearly wordless show, La Luna, will likely draw large Polish-speaking crowds, as have its past productions. But this is a piece every experimental director should see for its masterful demonstration of theatrical economy. In true Grotowski “poor theatre” fashion, the company uses only the barest means: a few plain costumes, a handful of props, a rolling piece of scaffolding, a fog machine, a dozen lighting instruments. But they’re employed so judiciously that the boxy, impersonal Chopin is transformed into a shifting dreamscape from which mesmerizing images emerge only to disappear into seemingly fathomless depths.
Polish history and politics played a role in the ad hoc partnership between Dyrkacz and Teatr Cogitatur. Dyrkacz, a biologist, left Poland in February 1980 on an exchange visa to join researchers at Michigan State University looking for a way to ward off the invasion of Argentinean killer bees. In December of 1981 the Polish government declared martial law, and Dyrkacz decided he’d never go back. After working several more years as a geneticist, he started a construction business. Director-writer Witold Izdebski also formed Teatr Cogitatur in 1981, in Katowice. But the decade that followed the establishment of martial law was a difficult one for the city’s burgeoning theater scene: though the company was making a name for itself, it seemed its work would never reach America.
