Political Repression in Poland: Ewa Wójciak and the Eighth Day Theater

By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, April 10th, 2013
Members of Teatr Ósmego Dnia (Theater of the Eight Day). From left to right: Tadeusz Janiszewski, Marcin Keszycki, Ewa Wojciak, Adam Borowski © Teatr Osmego Dnia

Tomek Kitlinski informed me yesterday about a new round in the continuing story of the escalating cultural war in Poland. This one hits close to home for me. I have a tragic sense of déjà vu. The greatest of the student theaters I studied in the 1970s, Teatr Osmego Dnia (Translated as Theater of the Eighth Day, or The Eighth Day Theater), continues to face official repression. A theater that combined the theatrical insights of Jerzy Grotowski with deep exploration of the existential problems of “socialist youth” continues its critical journey in the post-Communist order, revealing that some things haven’t changed: their challenging artistic excellence, the intolerance of authorities to alternative sensibility, opinion and judgment, and remarkably, the political monitoring of the private life of artists, the theme of their powerful play, “The Files,” which juxtaposes their dairies with their security files of the Ministry of the Interior from the 70s (think “The Lives of Others” with more dramatic and documentary power, expressed through superb fully embodied acting). The invasion of privacy in this case involved Ewa Wójciak Facebook page, as reported in the letter below. I reproduce the letter of protest here, which points to the unfolding events and comments by Kitlinski, illuminating the meaning of the events. Readers wishing to support this letter of protest should send their names and comments to teatr@osmego.art.pl

On the day of the elections for a new pope, shortly after the official announcement was made, Ewa Wójciak took to her private Facebook profile and wrote: “…and so they elected a prick, who denounced left-wing priests during the military dictatorship in Argentina.”

To Wójciak’s astonishment, her status almost instantly became the cause for a massive media outrage.

She was invited onto a show for the local TV channel, where she defended the private character of her Facebook status, while retaining her conviction that the choice made by the Vatican was of scandalous nature. She explained that, regardless of . . .

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April 10th, 2013 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Performing Human Rights: Pussy Riot vs. the Pseudo Religious, Homophobic, Misogynists of Eastern Europe

By Tomasz Kitlinski, September 17th, 2012
Yekaterina Samutsevich (Pussy Riot) at the Moscow Tagansky District Court © Denis Bochkarev | Wikimedia Commons

The Pussy Riot trial will go down in the history of injustices as the Oscar Wilde trial of the 21st century. Against the evil powers that be, the Moscow artists acknowledged their inspirers, fellow outcasts: Socrates (this connection to the martyr of philosophy has been noticed by David Remnick in The New Yorker), early feminist, transgender George Sand, and banished by Stalin, carnival researcher, Mikhail Bakhtin. Pussy Riot performs human rights. These women artists attack authoritarianism, misogyny, homophobia In their punk prayer, they protested Putin, the system, discrimination against the second sex, and as they sang, “gay pride exiled in chains to Siberia.” And still many hate them — and because of that they hate them. Why? In Eastern Europe the political class is anti-woman, anti-minority, anti-secular, because our countries have transitioned from false Communism to false Christianity: women, minorities, gays, artists to hell!

A formidable oppositionist movement is gaining strength: the supporters of Pussy Riot who don’t want prejudices to rule their life, demonstrations and shows of solidarity in the region and glocally, indignation of PEN Russia, PEN International, rock stars and the media, petitions (spearheaded in Poland’s leading broadsheet Gazeta Wyborcza by art critic Dorota Jarecka and signed by filmmakers Andrzej Wajda and Agnieszka Holland, curator Anda Rottenberg, Ethical Art professor Krzysztof Wodiczko ). Slovenian and cosmopolitan Slavoj Zizek wrote a letter to Pussy Riot with his characteristic wit: “It may sound crazy, but although I am an atheist, you are in my prayers.”

The brutal sentence on Pussy Riot encapsulates — beyond the headlines — the predicament which women face in Eastern Europe. Women curators in Hungary have been fired, and the world-renowned New School philosopher, Agnes Heller, has also been subject to a witch-hunt. Female artists and cultural operators in Poland have been humiliated. These prejudices are a major stumbling block in the democratic transition — in fact, phobias are destroying our societies. In Russia, women rebels . . .

Read more: Performing Human Rights: Pussy Riot vs. the Pseudo Religious, Homophobic, Misogynists of Eastern Europe

September 17th, 2012 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,