reviews

"Sentimental piece for four actors"

Theatre: Montownia is back fit

The paper world

Piotr Cieplak is on his winning streak. After the phenomenal „Children stories” by Isaac Bashevis Singer at the National Theatre, he again staged a show of surprising lightness and poetry. „Sentimental piece for four actors” is also a triumph of Montownia.
Of the old good Montownia.

A year ago I bridled at Piotr Cieplak for his „Marriage” at the Teatr Powszechny not because of its pessimism, a protest against what was at that time going on in our country. The problem was that Cieplak scribbled his political poster sloppily and the form of the show, or rather lack of it was unacceptable. I.B. Singer in the National Theatre was a great surprise. It would be difficult to repeat that surprise, but the show at the New Praga Theatre managed to achieve that.

In Frabryka Trzciny we could first see a little stage covered with a curtain made up with cardboard and scotch, but when the makeshift curtain is removed, it is followed by one hour of theatre ecstasy. In this miniature spectacle, Cieplak presents again how much joy may bring the pure play with the theatre attributes, together with its conventionality, creating world with surprising elements; how much may be described by means of a gesture; how to construct narration without a single word; and what is the role that the music plays in a spectacle.

This „Sentimental piece…,” despite being a theatre trifle, appears important in the context of the artistic pieces of the last decade, as it reminds that theatre is not only a sloppy poster, not only nauseate “modern” glass and metal decorations, and that music in a spectacle may not only be a soundtrack, but also a rightful participant of the show. I must admit that during this one hour of theatre show what intrigued me most was the plot itself, i.e. the story of four guys from different worlds, of different personalities and dreams, and even more that that the way that Cieplak and other member of the group tell this story. The spectacle does not include a single word, everything is told by means of gesture, stage action and music.

I acknowledge greatly the duet Szamburski/Zakrocki. The violinist and the clarinettist comment on the stage action, sometimes they co-create it, entertain the audience by travestying the musical works, and sometimes play bizarre sounds with help of their instruments. For example, creating a city noise out of two wind instruments is a real masterpiece.

And it was not the only one. Paulina Czernek prepared birds or a dog out of wrapping paper, cardboard and dull scotch used to wrapping parcels. The whole stage design is a paper theatre, miracles created out of the simplest materials, objectively ugly, but becoming beautiful when they are part of the show. The spectacle is made of such theatre nuances. Music notes taken out of a paper gramophone tube, paper predator snail biting into the leg of one of the actors, crowded city depicted by a parade of road signs - after a decade of sullenness, poetics of “forward ahead,” abandoning of the metaphorical language, signs, amateur acting seen as trance - it all sounds incredibly fresh. And what about the fact that this wonder lasts only slightly over an hour?

Zbigniew Raszewski noticed once that in our culture that only what is big is distinguished. Thus, „The Grundwald Battle” will always win with a miniature painting, and „Miniature waltz” will always be less significant than a concert by Chopin. But I prefer this paper world by Montownia and Cieplak to a couple of luxurious grandeurs for an incredible amount of money, haunting Polish stages.
Tomasz Mościcki, Dziennik (2008-05-22)

"The guys play and let us play"

Piotr Cieplak takes after Adam Słodowy recently. We watch his shows with mouth wide open, and there appears a question: it’s so simple, but how did he come up with it?

After having used a giant stage machinery in “Children stories” it’s time to show a more modern form, but at the same time not less innovative. „Sentimental piece for four actors” prepared with Montownia theatre group in the Praga theatre is placed in a small building made of bamboo, cardboard and strings. Simple symbols drawn on paper, road signs, clouds, animals, trees, drops of rain - everything resembles a dream of a crazy graphic designer, a hero of “The Science of Sleep” by Michel Gondry.

Among those design games the most important role is however that of the actors. Without words, only by means of gestures, props, mimics, with help of two musicians who can produce any sound, they tell a story of four men whose lives intertwine.

Mr Pillow (Adam Krawczuk) does not leave his home at any time, he grows cactuses and organizes a ceremony of tea-drinking every day. Nothing changes in his well ordered life until he meets a dog, of course, made of paper. The tramp (Rafał Rutkowski) with an everlasting fag sleeps under a paper drainpipe from which different object tend to fall from. The Rat catcher (Maciej Wierzbicki) runs an ordered, but not devoid of spicy secrets life. Mr Adventure (Marcin Pechuć) plays around them, pulling the strings of the toys and having a good time. The scene in which he catches raindrops cut in an unfolding roll of paper is one of those which are difficult to be quickly forgotten by the spectator.

Simple, sentimental, but also funny spectacle by Cieplak and Montownia is a relief for the eyes and mind after all the experiments served by modern directors. A friend of mine, forced to accompany me at the „Sentimental piece…,” who had some experience with the innovative, full of diverse -imsms theatre, while leaving the Praga theatre, concluded: „After watching such a show I regain the faith in theatre.” Indeed.
Agnieszka Rataj, Życie Warszawy (2008-05-20)

„Sentimental piece for four actors” in the Praga Theatre

I watch spectacles by Piotr Cieplak for a long time, I appreciate most - not all - of them, in many of them I can recognize a familiar stage style. However, I might have difficulties with defining the poetics of this theatre. It is largely protean and surprises constantly with a new form.

In the „Sentimental piece for four actors” it is not really the meaning, being pretty familiar, which is surprising, but the form of the show created by Cieplak, displaying an original invention. I remember his various ideas. In „The Soldier of the Madagascar Queen” from Toruń many years ago a locomotive rushed onto the stage, but even this idea was recently beaten by a monumental transatlantic liner from “Children stories” in the National Theatre. However, there also appeared empty spaces in which the imagination could create the worlds of Job and Lear or, for a change, The House at Pooh Corner.

Cieplak’s theatre can speak the language of the Bible, of Eliott and Białoszewski, but it can equally be silent. From this point of view, the new spectacle, repeating the familiar design, is simultaneously an revealing and fresh combination of asceticism and invention. The material from which the show was created is in itself ascetic - bamboo sticks, cardboard, paper, strings, rubber and sticks. What was made of this material by the directors, the stage designer (Paulina Czernek) and the actors of Montownia theatre group (Krawczuk, Perchuć, Rutkowski, Wierzbicki) is indeed impressive: purity and naivety of the childlike imagination, as from the paintings of Miró, accompanies on the stage the technical invention, associated easily with the series “Do It Yourself” by Adam Słodowy, emitted in our - Cieplak’s and mine - childhood days.

The frame of the cube restricting the game space was also made of bamboo. That’s a theatre and a world at the same time: before the show it is covered by cardboard blinds with paper collages resembling continents. When the blinds are down, the amazed spectators may see the specific reality, all cut, torn out or cobbled of cardboard and paper, divided into some kind of domains, attributed to four characters, each of whom represents a specific, even intentionally exaggerated type of man, experiencing the cycle of nights and days in their own particular way.

The spectacle is speechless, partially it approaches pantomime (which was Cieplak’s interest in his youth, I saw him miming as a guest in a diploma spectacle of PWST in the times when he yet studied Theatre Studies.) Pulling a string, turning a crank, rolling a blind down or putting up a cardboard screen - all this causes that the space is filled with motion, and multiplying paper forms become an ambiguous and fragile sign of the fabulousness revealed for a while in common materials.

That is actually a common practice of Cieplak, whose acceptance of life rooted in the faith stems from the reflection on the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, but also from the fascination with “grey eminences of delight” by Białoszewski and “study of the object” by Herbert. When I watch this show, I have associations, even against any director’s intentions, with some other contexts. I think of „Serious joy” by the Bim-Bom theatre group, of the lyrical surrealism of pictures in archival issues of „Przekrój” and of Michaux’s Plume. But first of all, I can see the frames of films created by the Polish animation school, especially that the subsequent images of the „sentimental quartet” are accompanied by not only music, but rather a soundtrack full of musical invention, performed live by a duet of Szamburski/Zakrocki. The sounds are illustrative, and simultaneously they add not only rhythm and atmosphere to the show, but also a pinch of self–irony.

This pinch enhances the spectacle; we no longer watch a nostalgic, nor infantile theatre of eternal boys, but rather a sophisticated in its simplicity story of a man who, as Hölderlin claimed, lives his life on the earth in a poetic way.
Janusz Majcherek, Gazeta Wyborcza

Taming the world

„Sentimental piece for four actors.” The spectacle by Piotr Cieplak produces positive energy. The spectator is convinced that life has plenty of shades.

Piotr Cieplak, the poet of the modern theatre, prepared this spectacle on the stage of Warsaw Praga Theatre, together with actors of a different, independent theatre group, Montownia. In a closed space of bamboo sticks, string and paper he tells the stories of four persons.

The tramp (Rafał Rutkowski) is a minimalist, he sleeps under a drainpipe and dreams about having something to eat and smoking a cigarette. In the opposite corner there lives Mr Pillow (Adam Krawczuk) - a man full of complexes. He separates himself from people in his little house as a turtle in his shell. He sometimes looks at a small window and a huge cactus placed there. The loner is sure that nothing can ever surprise him, but a dog he meets once changes the shade of his life.

In Cieplak’s microcosmos there exists also Mr Adventure (Marcin Perchuć), the king of life, a habitué, willing to experience all the time the new. A quartet of characters is complemented by the Rat catcher (Maciej Wierzbicki), whose life starts in the night. The stories of them all intertwine and mix in a tragicomic manoeuvring. In the life of each person there appears a surprise completely altering the point of view on the world.

The reality created by means of movement, gesture and live music relates to a child’s dream. This one-hour story attracts the audience’s attention thanks to its magic. Watching this greatly harmonic acting quartet, we recall our own childhood games. We come back to the world of simplest feelings and impressions. To our imagination which was capable to change a piece of paper into very complex objects.

„Sentimental piece…” is about emotion, warmness and beautiful feelings, but also about the fragility of life, as this world of strings and paper may easily collapse under a gust of wind.

If after watching spectacles in different theatres, we are depressed, suffering from nightmares and psychopathic visions, Piotr Cieplak’s reality may be a perfect antidote. He broadens the imagination and brings back the hope.
Jan Bończa-Szabłowski, Rzeczpospolita