STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
only rebellion summoned by the spectators during a presentation of “Learning to fly” (the
Artists o the Street Festival in Szczecin, July 2006), was the defence of the pillows on which
they were sitting.
When, at the end of the performance, the guards open the ‘gates of prison’ nobody moves. Only
with shouted commands the actors round up the spectators from the beds and arranged in penal
two rows, after which they are taken out of the space of the play. When the guards melt away,
the helpless two rows stand still for a while, looking around with uncertainty, before they decide
to start ‘learning to fly.’ (Actors’ reports tell us that the French spectators at the Aurillac festival
reacted differently. The question remains, however, if this was due to the fact that they were
more resistant to ‘captivity’ or because the French tradition of street theatre taught them an easy
interaction with the performers. The defeat (or maybe not?) of the performance of The Zone of
Silence Theatre shows very clearly the re-evaluations the theatre has gone through – the theatre
which at its beginning wanted to stand among people, at the agora and take a vote in a matter
significant for society. There is no agora in the city space, the street theatre has become an
outdoor entertainment of the middle class – because it treats itself this way and as such it is
treated by the spectators. Even if it still wants to take a vote in matters important for the society,
it does it more and more often in a language of carnival fun. Small wonder that it is difficult to
understand what it means by it. The Polish street has currently become an ‘anti-theatrical’ place,
its own ‘performability’ is able to successfully suppress the theatrical action, the agora is
someplace else, and no one really wants to ‘catch’ spectators in their ‘natural space,’ it is better
to invite them or even ‘contract’ them through the act of ticket purchase.
We are not opponents of the street theatre (currently, a more appropriate term would possibly be
‘open space theatre’) – on the contrary, we like it very much. However, we are of the opinion
that it is time to demythologize it - forget about intellectual carbon copies, which force to write
about the ‘democratic,’ ‘common’ theatre that approaches people, appropriating the whole city
space. This is because the theatre has changed, as well as the world around it.
A statement of Pawel Szkotak, the leader of Biuro Podrózy Theatre, the director of world
famous street performances, such as “Giordano” (1992) or “Carmen Funebre” (1993),
“Moonwalkers” (2000), “Pigpolis” (2003) can be a sombre death knell for the street theatre.
When asked, in the broader context of negotiations with the Iranian censorship regarding the
performance of “Swiniopolis” (“Pigpolis”), if he can imagine the return to the times of
censorship in Poland, Skotak answered: “(...) If they returned, one would have to reach for much
more radical means than a theatrical performance” 451 .
Spectacular feature of the world imposed on us by nature, described by Filipowicz in the
description of the world of concepts of Aristotle, imposes on people, including artists, the
obligation to take the challenge to shape the reality in order to achieve the ‘good.’ It anticipated
the activity of all the members of the process, the need of its ‘materialisation,’ authentication
with one’s life. The current ‘spectacularity’ of reality pushes us only to consumption, because –
as remarked by Debord – “the world (...), which is made visible by the spectacle, is the world of
a product, which has possessed everything that is directly lived through” 452 . As added by Ritzer:
“People, as spectators, do not participate in these performances, as a matter of fact they are
isolated from them. They watch performances, because they are attractive; but they are
performed for them, and they are not an integral part of the performances. (...) In the days of old,
a performance was usually an integral part of the daily life and it took its beginning from it (e.g.
a village marketplace). In the current society a performance is not an integral part of a usual life.
451 Biuro Podróży in Iran. ‘Pyrania’ (a supplement to ‘Gazeta Wyborcza’), 20.10.2006.
452 Guy Debord, Society..., p. 21-22.
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