NTERVIEWING DZIEMASZKIEWICZ
Your dancing career has its roots in Ekspresja Theatre, are the work methods at Patrz Mi Na Usta Theatre similar to those used by Wojciech Misiuro?
Leon Dziemaszkiewicz:
I have very good memories of my work with Wojciech, but there was quite a lot of tension there. We would spend long hours on the stage. As much as the work was very intense at the beginning, after some time it all changed. Wojciech had to struggle to find the funds and he left the artistic path and became more of a manager. There was a lack of the spirit of cooperation and that began to affect the team’s morale. At some point, the team became just a group of friends visiting SPATiF. At the same time, everybody expected masterpieces from Ekspresja Theatre. All this was putting quite a lot of pressure on us. I’m now a practicing ZEN Buddhist; I discover myself and I know what matters to me. I want to offend nobody; I want to create performances taking opinions of others into consideration and yet preserving what I as an artist want to show. For this reason the work over performances in my theatre is quite different than that in Ekspresja. I often see that there is often more than one good solution and I don’t see any conflict on this field. Everybody simply has their own artistic vision. But if you are the one creating the theatre then you want it to be your spectacle. Actually I find it difficult to speak about the team of Patrz MI Na Usta Theatre because people who work with me often also work for others. Using the potential of actors, dancers, I listen, look and select solutions, but when I work as a director, I don’t think about making my own spectacle.
Alicja:
At the beginning of your work over a performance, do you discuss your vision as director with actors, or do you know outright what the stage movement and dramaturgy should be like?
Leon:
There’s no discussion of movement, there’s hard work right from the beginning and there’s no predefined vision as to what something must finally be. Of course, it does happen that I have an idea for a given scene and I want to give it a specific shape, but then during the rehearsals I observe the stage reality and consider various interesting solutions and the dancers’ skills. Sometimes it is just their movement that becomes the starting point for a whole sequence. I try to be open, I don’t want to pursue blindly an idea that I have stored somewhere in my mind. The framework for the spectacle must be complete right at the start because it is difficult to start a spectacle from nothing. I have a certain outline for the scenes in my mind but their final shape may be totally different. When we were working over “Café Domino Zaprasza” (Welcome to Domino Café) with Anna Steller, Ania would come to the rehearsals, we would set a pantomime rehearsal and then it started rolling. Very nice work, full of surprises. I never have a complete vision for the whole of the performance - I often have what are just single images. We build performances as you build collages. One scene may have little to do with another one. We put elements together. Sometimes one improvisation may give rise to another one. Event sequences are random in nature. This way we ourselves discover the show at the moment of its creation. This series of recognitions enhances my understanding of me as man. It’s different than at Ekspresja – now I feel my awareness is rising.
Alicja:
Do you think your artistic development started only after you left Ekspresja Theatre?
Leon:
It’s difficult to speak about the development of my artistic personality in those days because my awareness was at a very low level then. I was more of a megalomaniac boosting my Ego. Everything was based on Ego. Also for this reason it was a blind alley. I improved my physical skills considerably then. If there was any personality development to speak of, it occurred without my awareness of it happening, through experience because the situations were real. I left.  
Alicja:
Leaving Ekspresja Theatre, did you already have a vision of your own team?
Leon:
No. For a long time I couldn’t shake off the feeling of not belonging to any group. I managed to arrange for a room in Brzeźno where, with a group of three of four people, we were trying to create. We made one show within BUT festival at St. John’s Church, then we acted at an exhibition at Sfinks gallery. And then friends from Berlin called saying there was some acting competition. I went, but I didn’t know German well and at the audition I misunderstood a direction and started to run frantically instead of walking. The jury liked it and I got the role. The performance we created then did not excel; I didn’t stay with the group but I stayed in Berlin. I did a lot of model posing in those days. After some time I called the girl I had done a performance with and suggested we should do our own spectacle. She agreed. We worked in tandem. We toured with our performances, participating in festivals but all the time I had a feeling I wasn’t doing quite what I wanted, I wasn’t artistically fulfilled. German artists sometimes have something in themselves that you feel lack of complete openness and honesty. As if they were afraid of something. It’s as if they preferred to stay on the safe side and were hiding their emotions. The same was required of me. I found it very tiresome. It was then when I met my friend and the “gold cage” period started for me. I didn’t have to do anything and I was growing slack. I became aware of living in emptiness and felt the need of artistic creation. I decided I had to do something about it. With two other Poles we did the National Drug Queen at Klub Polskich Nieudaczników (Polish Losers’ Club) in Berlin. After some time I decided to come back to Poland to create here. Unfortunately I was struck down with disease just then. When you are facing death, you realize particularly well how time has been slipping through your fingers, quite unproductively. During my fight with the disease I underwent a “mind against disease” therapy and it was the moment that changed me a lot. I won the battle against cancer. It was imperative that I should start doing something creative. After the treatment ended I came back to Tricity and did Café Domino. I usually propose cooperation to people I know: Bożena Eltermann, Marek Kakareko, Anna Steller, Bożena Zezula, Milena Czernik, people I know I can create something with. First I see man, than a hero and the whole story. People who work with me know that I work quite naturally and I expect the same of them. I can’t imagine false notes on the stage. During rehearsals, when I don’t know something, I admit it and it is good to have at hand people who can understand it.
Alicja:
Many artists would feel embarrassed admitting lack of knowledge. They experience such inhibitors as the spectacle’s “correctness”. There are not many artists that are ready to shock in such a direct way as you do. Is that your creative strategy or, on the contrary, its lack?
Leon:
I am very spontaneous and honest in what I do. Principles do not exist for me because when a situation changes, the rules change too. People try to stick artificially to rules at all costs and do something for a certain ideal, perhaps out of fear too. It’s not about changing the core of your personality but we should agree that behavior, just as artistic techniques, evolves. The most important thing is to be honest. If somebody finds something shocking, it’s good because it means that they are honest in perception. There is no single esthetics. Instead there is an eclectic choice of forms, freedom in combining stage materials. My aim is to create art that will move audiences. I would very much like to liberate people of their fear of themselves.  
Alicja:
Against the background of other Polish theatres, you are very characteristic, you often use specific figures and props: pigs, birds, axes, you like disguise, what you show on the stage is often utterly surprising to your audiences. Is surprising audiences the main purpose of your art?
Leon:
Yes, I like pushing people out of balance, but in a positive way. In my spectacles I often use such costumes as polar bears, swans, pigs. It is positive. At one moment we see a ballet of three pigs, then they disappear – after some time a pig turns up in a different “sentiment” – this way it gets a character of its own, it shows a multilayer structure of pigs. Often the same figures and props reappear in subsequent performances. It’s a little bit like in Kantor’s plays, where props themselves carried a multilayer story, gathered from many spectacles. These repetitions come from me, they are a certain means of communication characteristic of me, a transposition of my sentiments. When their power to communicate wears off, I resign from them.
Alicja:
Do you have a new production in mind now?
Leon:
Now I would like to create a completely different spectacle. I’m thinking of something of a fairy-tale kind, to the music by Tchaikovsky. With relative consistence, I would like to show the ethereal quality of the world: a forest, elves, some apparitions. Sometimes I also think about a cubist production, where the stage design would be dominated by huge, weird shapes and strange figures straight from Picasso’s paintings. I wouldn’t like to be limited to modern dance – I want to be free in selecting artistic means.
Alicja:
To be honest in what you do, without becoming attached to any kind of esthetics, you must have a lot of courage and strength because each time you often find yourself in something completely new, it can be tiring. Don’t you sometimes feel like lingering in one form for some time?
Leon:
That is exactly what I would find tiring. I became aware of the fact, also thanks to my Buddhist practice, that development is possible through change only. Then you can discover yourself anew. It’s not only the viewer that is shocked: sometimes I, too, wonder how things will develop or I look to see how they have developed in a performance – I surprise myself as well.
Alicja:
Sometimes your performances are confined to a certain space that determines them strongly. How do you select the space on which the performance will be construed?
Leon:
As for the space, it’s not that I select it – I merely adapt what I have at my disposal. Not every performance though is inseparably attached to a certain space. Such situations do happen, but, for example, “Różana Góra” (Rose Mountain) can be played in many different places. It is true that a change of space will bring on a change in perception, but it is also very interesting.
Alicja:
The viewer is very important for you. Actually your whole artistic operation is targeted at the viewer. It is a kind of coexistence with the audience which often leads to a breach of theatrical fiction. Is this direct interaction indispensible, is it the key element that fuels your passion?
Leon:
I’m very much interested in the stage-audience interaction. Every viewer is of interest to me. Directors usually pursue a certain dramaturgic line whose core is some sort of story. I stimulate, giving freedom of interpretations. I let go of the viewer; I don’t want to point where they should look and what should happen next. Sometimes I do something in a spectacle that the viewer does not know whether or not it’s part of the performance. In “Narodowa Drug Queen” (National Drug Queen) there is one moment when the acting is apparently broken as Bożena Eltermann pushes me away and I feel outraged. The viewer is consternated but presently we resume our acting. I do not give the viewer time for analysis, I want this situation to stimulate the viewer but I don’t want rational explanations to take over. We can observe very interesting reactions on such occasions. In fact, when the viewer swings into full perception they help us move on. It’s really fascinating.
Alicja:
In those moments you attempt at approaching the edge of the viewer’s awareness; spectators lose their feeling of safety standing on the crossroads between two realities. Perhaps it is actually a third added quality. How do you see it?
Leon:
Yes, it is just that state of active creation involving us and the audience. Of course all performances are preconceived in some way, but this element of surprise is quite magical. Audiences, too, enjoy becoming involved. I do it all with respect for the viewer in mind, so that the viewer is not harmed.
Alicja:
You are fascinated with reaching people, you enjoy coming forward to them, and what is your attitude to workshops, to instruction?
Leon:
In fact I sometimes run classes in Grawitacja studio in Stocznia, but I must admit I’m not consistent at all in that. I prefer workshops as a short stage in teaching - school is not for me, I guess, because one needs more stabilization for it.
Alicja:
Do you like working with new completely unknown choreographers?
Leon:
Not such completely unknown ones. Of course I would be happy to become familiar with their work but not in a situation when we would have to focus on producing a new performance. I could only offer myself to somebody as a dance artist, in a clearly defined situation of my “passivity” as a director. I have a very strong personality and it would be very demanding on me, I would have to give up, so to speak, part of myself.  
I would be happy, however, to work with artists from other genres of art, for example with a painter who would do the stage design for me or musicians, but it all depends on what people are and not on who they are. For me, also at the theatre, it’s man that counts.
The interview with Krzysztofem Leonem Dziemaszkiewiczem, 2009-11-06
METROPOLIA 2009
On 27-30 December, a great festival Metropolia jest Okey (Metropolis is Okay) took place, in which 35 Tricity music groups, individual musicians as well 6 independent theatres participated.
It was the first such event ever! The four-day festival of the Tricity music and independent theatrical art united Gdańsk, Sopot and Gdynia. The festival’s slogan was “Metropolis is Okay”.
In Tricity’s three most important clubs: Parlament (Gdańsk), Sfinks (Sopot) and Ucho (Gdunia) hosted 35 music groups and individual musicians. Independent dance theatres also had their separate day. Never before had there been such a set of talented artists performing in free concerts during one single event. We wouldn’t have seen them together even in concerts organized by Jurek Owsiak.
The author and organizer of the undertaking was Larry Ugwu, the director of the Baltic Culture Center. He invited Gazeta Wyborcza to cooperate in the project. The daily has been promoting the idea of one Tricity metropolis since March this year. Larry Ugwu mobilized the whole Tricity music-theatrical environment and proved that joint projects, jointly-organized events, are feasible, and that we are, after all, one large family.
The clubs’ owners quickly took up the idea, just like the musicians. This way the Metropolis Culture Holiday (the festival's alternative name) was possible to organize in such a short period of time.