“Real I” (1st part)

A scene from the play Unusual Wedding. Of course: the Market Stall She: Marie Vayssiere Owner of the joint: Andrzej Wełmiński photo Bogdan Axmann

“All I have been doing in Art
has been a reflection of my attitude
towards the events happening around me,
the situation in which I have lived, my fears,
my trust in this and not something else,
my distrust for what I was given to trust, my scepticism,
hope.

To express all this

and for my own use
I have created

the Idea of Reality
which rejected

the notion of illusion,
that is the procedure recognized as natural for the theatre…
PLAYING,
performing,
“reproducing”

what was written

in a drama (a “play”).
The word “reproducing”

had a malicious undertone –

something that contradicts autonomy,

the autonomy of theatre…
I was proud of this radicalism.
I was not, however, orthodox enough –

to believe it to the end.
In practice

I indulged “aside”

in doubts

and probably this is what protected my performances

from boredom and dryness.

It does not mean that today

I abandon this idea.

I owe it the fact that I have done something

to broaden the autonomy of theatre
and to denounce the common

unbearable

method

of “pretending” seriously

etc. etc.

Eventually, the moment has come

in my creation,
which I begin to consider

a “résumé” –
the moment – I should say –

ultimate

when one makes a self-examination.
How was it really

with that reality.
Have I really done for it all I could?
I begin to be severe

on myself.

When I was to be a child,

someone else was a child,

not real I
(this can still be excused).
When I was to die,

someone else was dying.

He “played” me dying.
And that “playing”,

which I had excommunicated,

functioned perfectly.

When with persistence and longing
I continuously

kept going back in my thoughts

to my School Class,
it was not me but others (actors)

who returned to school desk,
returned, “performed”,

and “pretended”.

To tell the truth

I achieved nothing but the fact

that with passion and satisfaction

I showed

that they were “pretending”.
My presence on the stage

was supposed to cover up the failure of
my impossible idea:
of “not playing”,

and to rescue

its last proof and reason:

“pretending” .

But deep in my soul

I did not give up.

Life itself gave me a hand…

My last expedition in this life

which no less than my art
I understood as a perpetual journey
beyond time

and beyond all right… (…)”

Kantor, Tadeusz. Guide to the performance “I Shall Never Return”: Kraków 1990, p. 18-19 .