STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
“problems with establishing, who has the right to the city’ and ‘transferring agora to the public
media space” 449 .
The second statement is especially crucial for further reflections. The Polish street theatre of the
seventies, eighties and the beginning of the nineties continued the tradition started by the
Akademia Ruchu Performance Group and Teatr Ósmego Dnia in the 1970s and 1980s of the
20th century – let us remind here of the beginnings of the Biuro Podrózy Theatre and its
unshaken Giordano Bruno or war stories of Bosnian Muslims during the war in Yugoslavia. It
was a theatre which entered the agora, trying to establish at least its substitute in the ‘politically
privatized’ city. Now the agora exists, but not in the real but virtual space, and the theatre is
unable to enter it, because it will cease to be theatre (perhaps our standpoint in this issue is very
principled, but we insist that in order for a theatre to exist one needs direct, and not only
immediate, contact between performers and recipients). Here we think that the theatre lost this
battle in a walk-over, placing safety of the presentation of artistic visions in isolated outdoor
spaces over interaction with the chaotic space of the living street. In our opinion, street theatre
simply withdrew from the fight with the Performance, which takes place daily. Upon entering
the street, it would enter a reality already theatricised once, as remarked by Guy Debord:
“Spectacle is currently a model of socially dominating life. It is an omnipresent confirmation of
a choice once made (...).” 450 Thus, the street theatre must join this self-validation performance;
or contrarily – must protect itself from its own presented doubts, alternative solutions in
seemingly open spaces, but as a matter of fact isolated from the normal life of a city. As a result,
theatre in the street space is used to reinforce our belief that ‘as a matter of fact we are all the
same.’
These circumstances, however, give birth to a communication situation, named ‘transmission
ghetto.’ To illustrate it we will use the example of ‘The Ark’ by The Theatre of the Eighth Day,
performed in Szczecin at midnight, at the aforementioned, well isolated from the city, university
campus (because the ‘good working people’ must not be disturbed in their sleep, and the
theatrical effects are best seen in ‘naturally darkened’ space, therefore, the performance cannot
take place earlier). The very humanist message on behalf of millions of emigrants wandering the
world was watched by a few hundreds of people, a significant part of whom was well
acquainted with the art of The Theatre of the Eighth Day and without their performance was full
of compassion for the wanderers. On the other hand, however, the extremely spectacular form of
the performance, its theatricality, may easily cause its reception by the spectators at the pure
aesthetic level, without considering the plot (especially that the subject matter of the
performance is very faint and can be summarized in three sentences). The actors of the Teatr
Strefa Ciszy (Zone of Silence Theatre, established in 1993) have become victims of such way of
existence of theatre in open space, currently dominating in Poland. One proof is the
‘communication defeat’ which they suffered in their latest, excellent and very wise,
performance. “Learning to fly” seemingly uses a technique of free play with the audience - well
mastered by the Strefa Ciszy theatre. At the beginning of the performance, the spectators are
invited to sit on beds, and they are presented with numbered boards. It all looks like good fun.
Even when it turns out that the beds are prisons, and the ushers – prison guards. The spectators
in the play space are subject to ‘mild captivity’ – no one insults them (and if so, only slightly),
they are only expected to do ‘funny’ and harmless acts, such as blowing up trashy, extremely
red, heart-shaped, balloons, for which they get a reward of chips and pillows, on which they can
comfortably sit. The people, amused by their subjection to captivity do not react (or perhaps do
not notice) when one of them – the rebellious one - disappears behind a hospital screen. The
449 Ibid.
450 G. Debord: Society of Spectacle. Gdańsk, 1998, p. 12.
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PE 375.307