We were all (the team of The Trial, the performance based on Franz Kafka’s novel) immensely happy and excited that we were going to present our show in New York City. After all the successful tours in Europe, we felt, both the management of the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts and the ensemble and management of the Nowy Theatre, the cultural and human importance of this American presentation. In the face of the current cultural and political situation in the United States, our performance would have had a considerable mission to fulfill. Preparations were about to end, the Polish organizers were applying for visas, setting flight dates, etc… the New York organizers printed the show title in their program and started, as they said, selling tickets. A sudden crash in the form of an outright denial of financial support from the Polish side for this extremely important act of Polish-American cultural cooperation shattered and trashed (once again!) all the extensive preparations and costs already incurred by the institutions on both sides of the ocean. It also trashed the creative ethos of the artists and all the values which could have been transmitted in this act.
Why is this happening? We often ask ourselves this question these days…
The declaration of Minister Glinski (Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland) is clear: artists who do not sympathize with the current leadership’s cultural policy, who criticize its values, decisions and actions will be treated as enemies of Poland and will not be supported by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in any form —> neither in projects realized in Poland nor in foreign presentation of their works. The Ministry’s evident intention is to create a new elite of Polish artists sympathetic to the current leadership…
Minister Gliński’s so-called blacklist is an open secret, one which I’m honored to be a part of. Although the minister and his officials deny the existence of this blacklist, everyday praxis contradicts this. It’s in the international relationships that we can see it in a less disguised and perhaps even more grotesque form. For example, Audronis Liuga, former artistic director of the Lithuanian National Theatre in Vilnius was awarded a medal for Lithuanian-Polish cultural cooperation. What exactly for? For Hero’s Square by Thomas Bernhard, a performance which I directed in the National Theatre in Vilnius. When, during the awards ceremony, he proposed participation in a new project to the Polish cultural officials, he learned (directly, without beating around the bush) that he would not get any money for Lupa. I could cite many other similar cases…
I leave this story without a final conclusion…
Krystian Lupa