ABOUT THE BRAVE PIETRICIAN AND THE ORPHAN MARYSIA. Fairy tale for adults

What would Maria Konopnicka write about if she lived in these days? What did the letters burned by her daughters contain? What is written in the rhythm of her poems? What unnamed desires, longings? In the era of positivism, a woman who wanted to write and make a living from it, who wanted to avoid censorship but at the same time be heard, had to face dozens of limitations, compromise, silence herself, direct the pen to “important matters”, mark her commitment to the national liberation struggle. Your affairs, everyday problems, relationships with children, oppressive marriages, disappointments in relationships, poverty, should have been hidden deep in the closet and used only when it could serve a larger idea. Especially it was necessary to have relationships in the closet that did not fit into the “norm”. Free self-expression could only be dreamed of. Women in the age of shame, in an age of lack of tools with which to describe this shame, fled into very incomplete self-portraits. Pieces of freedom had to tear off, more than once exposing themselves to ridicule.

Maria Konopnicka spent the last twenty years of her life at the side of a woman who was two decades younger than her — traveling with her around Europe, writing, trying to free herself from the supervision of experts and domestic obligations on the one hand, and working in literature on the image of the Vieszczka on the other. Konopnicka did not even allow herself to be photographed, the letters she wrote ordered to destroy the addressees, she wanted to have control over everything that was associated with her. This carefully worked out image had to consume huge amounts of time and cost a lot of creative force.

The play About the brave Pietrk and the orphan Marysia. A fairy tale for adults is a fantasy about Konopnicka, which breaks away from images and expectations — through an experiment she checks what desires, goals and attitudes it consists of. She reproduces these burnt letters, these notes in the margins, those unspoken decades spent hand in hand with Maria Dulębianka, whom she calls “Pietrka with rubbed elbows”. How many were (and are) such pairs of “friends”, “aunts”, “sisters” in villages and towns? Couples who could not even whisper about their love, because they did not have words, images and the idea that their reflections live in the village next door? How many forgotten, unspoken kisses, emotions, joint trips and accompaniment in leaving that no one will ever tell again? How many empty cottages where such pairs of girls, women lived?

Director: Wiktor RubindraMaturgy: Jolanta JaniczakSet design: Wiktor RubinCostume design: Hanna MaciągMusic: Krzysztof KaliskiLight, video: Marek KozakiewiczAssistant director and set designer: Monika WiniarskaInspector: Magdalena MatusewiczProduction: Zuzanna Głowacka

Mariusz Adamski Michael Kaleta Barbara Krasinska Agnieszka Kwiatniewska Monika Roszko Aleksandra Samelczak Kornelia Trawkowska

I recommend visiting Poznań for a performance by Wiktor Rubin and Jolanta Janiczak, who at the Polish Theatre in Poznań, through the biographies of Konopnicka and Dulębianka, take up a very important topic! Women's rights and freedoms, emancipation, patriarchy. One is that they take up the subject and two that they do it really well! And in such a simple form, without unnecessary embellishments, linguistic or aesthetic inflection.

There is a very interesting contradiction in this play at the formal level: on the one hand, the repertory theater is accused in it of reproducing bad patterns and practices, and on the other hand, Rubin has created an extremely classic (as per se) performance. No interaction with the audience, no stepping out of the role, beautifully spoken text, costumes, lyrical scenes nicely lit by spotlights.

So what? Are we trying to dismantle the system from the inside? Implant new content in old forms? Or, on the contrary, do we self-compromise? How does the form affect the content here? And vice versa? Is it even important? Is the medium of communication itself a message? Where does this theater take place? In the bright light of declarations and manifestos or in the dim spotlight of indecision and obscurity? These (and other), very interesting questions arise in the head during the viewing of “About the brave Peter and the orphan Mary”. The fairytale title is not deceptive at all — it is known that the fairy tale is meant to teach. And he learns best by asking questions.

“About the brave Peter and the orphan Marysia. Fairytale for Adults” fits perfectly, but ironically, into the celebration of the centenary of Poland's regaining independence and women's right to vote, prolonging the discussion on the restriction of women's freedoms and the LGBTQ+ community. The show, although radical in its tone, does not at all give clear answers to the problems posed. Rather, it provokes many reflections and questions, and many of them are directed to the very form of performance and talk about socially important topics in the theater and beyond. For is there still room in our world for a moment of doubt and a momentary retreat, or is there only room left for an incessant struggle for one's rights and views?

The situations presented on stage are immersed in a historical context, but in an alarming majority, the problems discussed are still visible today. The creators do not dress their show in understatement and subtlety. They call problems by name, precise words and gestures. Many strong, risky scenes here, which by their uncompromising pronunciation and form clearly show the scale of the adequacy of the problems discussed on stage. (...) The playwright created a dynamic narrative, skillfully intertwined with literary and social contexts, and also dug the ground for unusual acting creations. The coherent (...) composition of the text allowed the performers to perform on stage, which worked well in all scenes.”

Peasants, servants, nuns, townspeople, professors, midwives, waitresses, singers, cleaners, social workers, policemen and prostitutes are called to speak before a silent series of passive indifference to the established rules governing the world — “we need your testimonies, whispers, colors, colors”. An important call articulated by Konopnicka is confirmed in silence, at this moment more resounding than a scream, by a naked Dulębianka. Ignoring their voices not only deprives us of diversity, but also asserts patriarchal, heteronormative power. The instrument of its domination is ignorance. Too often we are unaware of the scale of phenomena that we marginalize as rare. That is why it is so important for any minority to come out of the closet. Silence produces false consciousness. I don't care who sleeps with whom, but I appreciate the importance of the stage call for women who love women to reveal themselves: “boys have their stories about cowboys in love with each other, the Sistine Chapel, and we?”.

What does the audience of the Polish Theater in Poznań receive when they choose to play a “fairy tale for adults”, which the creators themselves define in this way? Very good show. This is an excerpt from the biography of Maria Konopnicka, which is intended to complement her hitherto incomplete portrait. A passage that does not claim to be historical truth and is rather one of the possible interpretations of the past. A twenty-year-old “cut” under the banner “Maria Dulębianka”. [...] Several worlds collide on the stage. In addition to both Maria, we also meet Konopnicka's children — the favorite Zofia (Mariusz Adamski) and the black sheep Helena (great role of the expressive Kornelia Trawkowska), a young historian in love with her, Maksymilian Gumplowicz (full of irony and swing Michał Kaleta), whose love profession pushed him to suicides, and British women's advocates at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries: writer Marguerite John Radclyffe-Hall (Barbara Krasińska) and her partner, Mabel Batten (Zuzanna Saporznikow).

The dramaturgy of the play is subordinated to building more and more tension around the decision of the protagonist. Konopnicka struggles with indecision, but finally opens up and demands her rights, giving a speech to the audience in which she urges the servants, housewives, policewomen and all other women not to be afraid to reveal their identity and not to allow themselves to be discriminated against. Janiczak and Rubin once again leave the audience with important questions.

The question of theatre — which often appears in the works of Janiczak and Rubin — as a place of emancipation or a medium expanding the field of democracy is extremely relevant here. Is the repertory theater really a good place for stories about the relationship between Konopnicka and Dulębianka? About their love and about the political relationship between them, in which Dulębianka — called Pietrka by Konopnicka, which on stage sounds as affectionate as it is patronizing — fought for women's rights, while Konopnicka still could not decide whether to be a Polish Mother or to emancipate herself. And it was Dulębianka after Konopnicka's death that she was first thrown out of their common home, later from the tomb, and finally finally erased from the poet's biography. So that Konopnicka could be erected monuments, and in academies in schools named after her, the poems of the poet could be recited, without mentioning either Dulębianka or the fact that she was a lesbian.

The play About the brave Pietrk and the orphan Marysia. A fairy tale for adults directed by Wiktor Rubin was performed at the Festival of Polish Contemporary Arts R @port in Gdynia.