STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
We travel to Disney World, where far from home we make use of various forms of
entertainment in a way which, to a great extent, is preset for us by the designers of the park and
is in total isolation from our life” 453 .
Leaving theatrical buildings, which was a heroic act for the previous generation of the Polish
artists, has currently lost its meaning. Instead of the street theatre we have the outdoor theatre,
and this is mostly a form of industrialised entertainment. Currently, the ‘non-theatrical’ spaces
also co-create “the world of illusion isolated from the real world” 454 . The revolution has turned a
full circle and currently, if we would like to search ‘new culture spaces’ through a change of
place of performance presentation, we actually stand in more or less the same place as a century
ago.
3. Conclusion
The street theatre, both in Poland and in the Western Europe, reached its height in the 90-ties of
the 20 th century. Theatre artists manifest in their thinking, what was also explicite formulated by
a French researcher Philippe Chaudoir among others, that for our cultural region the street is a
synonym of the public space – a place where a particular community can manifest itself. The
differences appear when it comes to perceiving the ancestors of the contemporary street theatre.
In the Polish theatre there were no references to street fairs or ancient traditions. The starting
point was rather inspiration drawn from the avant-garde contemporary art and references to
‘here and now’, the specific social situation, and what follows, also political (in this particular
order). The social aspect and the social impulse were a starting point for street theatres.
Therefore, in the Polish context, the street theatre was an expression of not only the
democratization of art, but of general democratization, the democratization of the seized public
spaces, which were yet to become the public space. The democratization of art was initially an
additional element, rather than an originally assumed one. It was not until the nineties that the
democratization of the public life was realized, and the slogan which led to create theatre on the
street was ‘democratization of art’. This would differentiate the beginnings of the Polish street
theatre from the Western.
Since the Polish street theatre assumed to enter a dialogue with the urban space (however it used
to be dangerous for both performers and audience), and since at some historical moment it was
the only space allowing for the open, ‘mass’ communication among people, the art of theatre
became a mediator. In this way, the street theatre helped constitute the public space in the
Habermas sense – the one which may give birth to the ‘public opinion’ not concocted by the
authorities. Because it were outstanding artists who undertook work on the street, this social
impulse gained an important artistic spirit, it made the creation of new, original means of
expression possible. However, all that was a consequence of the chosen way to react to social
reality. An example of a short life of the street theatre at the Malta Festival (consider the
questionnaire filled in by John Schranz) seems to support this thesis – the Malta street theatre
occurred as a reaction to the governmental manipulation of elections. The street becomes in this
context a ‘means of expression’, which is more difficult to be ruled by the authorities than, for
453 George Ritzer, Magical..., p. 185.
454 Which does not mean that there no longer are performances staged in streets or open spaces, which escape the
‘world of performance.’ Their main value, however, is not innovative treatment of the space which is often
treated quite instrumentally, but an attempt to renew the contact between the spectator and the actor which is
based on the appeal to a message significant for the group. An example of such performances can be ‘Not on
my behalf’ The Living Theatre, the described here “Learning to fly” of the Poznan -based The Zone of Silence
Theatre or the “Simply” (taken out of a theatre hall) of the Toruń-based Teatr Wiczy (Poland). They are,
however, small islands on a vast ocean.
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PE 375.307