Week Ending October 20th, 2007

Bar Across From Teatr Lalek
Bar in Poland=CafeteriaPawel and Dasia's Living Room

Red Church At Night

Murdas Set

Murdas Set

Murdas Set

Pawel In Makeup

So In Love!

This week was a very busy week here in Bialystok. Tuesday was an anniversary for Pope John Paul. The television had programs on about him. On Tuesday I toured the school visiting the lovely studios and facilities that they have here. In addition I visited the costume shop and the puppet construction studio. While there I met the professor that built the one hundred string marionette of Maestro Paderewski. After the visits in the school I went out into the city again with Anna, the International Secretary and I went into a book shop and purchased a language course and I am trying that out. The difficult part is making an American mouth form the double consonants that appear in the Polish language. I also purchased a book by my favorite Polish playwright, Tadeusz Rozewicz, who is a survivor of World War II. Much of his writings are on that subject and also questioning if art being possible after such great tragedy and human misery. This book, nauka chodzenia is in Polish and I am translating it, albeit very slowly. I was fortunate to be the assistant director or Rezyseria Asystent for the world English premier of Rozewicz’s Card Index Scattered.

On Wednesday I had a lovely dinner with Pawel and Dasia at their apartment in a village just outside of Bialystok. It was a pleasant meal with a wonderful onion soup that Dasia made along with ribs and mashed potatoes prepared as in the south of Poland. Dasia’s mother prepares them in the usual way and then adds chopped kapusta or cabbage to the potatoes. We reminisced about times spent together at our house in the States and about how we all wish that Debbie had been able to accompany me on this journey. Dasia particularly misses Deb as they are close from all the times we have spent together at our house. Still, it is wonderful to be with them here in Poland.

On Thursday and Friday mornings I awoke early and walked to the Teatr Lalek for performances of Pawel and Dasia’s latest show Murdas. Bajka which is a fairy tale and also a political work which was freely adapted from Stanislaw Lem’s The Tale of King Gnuff. The first day’s performance was for primary school aged children who enjoyed it immensely. The second day’s performance was for University students that both enjoyed it and also perceived the secondary meaning contained in Lem’s work. This performance was followed by a talk back with almost a full audience remaining to talk with the actors. I was introduced to the students after this performance. After the talk back I had lunch with Pawel, Dasia and Mr. Pawel Aigner, the director. In the afternoon I accompanied Pawel to the Music Academy, where Pawel also teaches.

Today was Saturday and at 1:15 PM I presented the first of my series of Fulbright Lectures. This lecture encompassed background information on the United States, comparisons between Poland and the U.S., and then on to early theatre in the U.S. The lecture also included the subject of Minstrel shows, Vaudeville, Burlesque, the Showboats, and the Wild West Shows.

Discussions were held on the myth that these early entertainments encompassed and how these myths are worked in to current works of American Drama. The lecture lasted for two hours and then I screened John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. In this film Ford dealt with the issues of Manifest Destiny, segregation and racism, and other social issues. Both the lecture and screening was met with great approval and was attended by students of the Academy and students from the philology department of the University of Bialystok. The next lecture in the series will cover playwright Eugene O’Neill.