On The Other Side Of The Conundrum – A New Drama Inspired By “Picnic At Hanging Rock” In The National Theater Of Warsaw Poland [Part I]

It might seem that the indefinitely prolonged Covid epidemic, which contributed to the postponement of the premiere of Picnic at Hanging Rock, overshadowed the topicality of the problems of climate catastrophe or the ruthless violence of colonial states and religious institutions against the weak, which lay at the heart of the new drama (2021), written for the National Theater in Warsaw based on the motives of the popular novel and cult film for many. However, it only took two months of vacation for the theatrical images to materialize in the wake of massive fires in Southern Europe and the horrifying discoveries of graves of alumni of Catholic and then state-forced schools for Indian, Inuit and Métis children in Canada. Reality has once again made us realize that the end of the world is not limited to imaginings dictated by the current source of fear, which is probably why today’s humanists are more likely to write about the “ends of the world” than its particular final form.

Consistently, the bushfires that appear in the play and the exploration of man’s multiple types of violence against other people and nature are not a picture of a chosen tool for the future destruction of our human world, but are part of an ongoing catastrophe that embraces the totality of our past, present and future experience. The enormous scale of the theatrical story of impending doom thus fulfills the theses of Timothy Morton, who insists that the end of the world belongs to our past rather than to the future, while its nature is that of a hyper-object, that is, a phenomenon beyond the possibility of grasping with our senses.

Marta Wągrocka (Marion), Justina Kowalska (Blanche), Katarzyna Pośpiech (Rosamunda), Michalina Łabacz (Miranda), Anna Bieżyńska (Lily), Zuzanna Saporznikow (Irma), Paulina Szostak (Edyta). Foto: Magda Hueckel/Arkiwum Artystyczne Teatru.

Following the direction set by Morton’s thought, the dramaturgical picture of the cataclysm, which is becoming increasingly clear to the modern inhabitants of our globe, is anchored in a literary story from more than a century ago. The mysterious disappearance of three girls and a schoolteacher who, on St. Valentine’s Day in 1900, went with the other residents of the boarding school for a picnic under a hanging rock grows to epic proportions on the stage of the National Theater in Warsaw, a story about humanity and the world. The words of one of the boarders looking down from the rock: “The view is extraordinary, when you squint your eyes you can see the ocean, when you close them you can see the whole world. (…). Here to point a finger at the sky is to touch it,” make it clear to the viewer that Australia as a place of action is only pars pro toto of the whole world. Consistently, therefore, the bushfire becomes, in Lindsay’s new theatrical version of the novel, a symptom of the destruction of our globe; the character of Pastor, absent from the novel, allows violence to be introduced into the drama not as the mischief of random characters, but as the pervasive evil of the prevailing system; and the titular picnic becomes a metaphorical image of our human existence in a world where we have sat comfortably in the belief of our superiority, of the right to carefree fun in all circumstances, and finally of our status as indestructible. It’s easy to get used to such a glamorous life. However, disaster is brewing all around us, and it is quite possible that we will soon have to get used to something completely different, when the coming end of the world(s) will transform us from rulers into powerless victims. And it needs by no means be an all-encompassing final conflagration or deluge. For experiencing the end is not about the final moment of a dramatic catastrophe in the future, but is a process that has already begun. It is enough to realize how we reacted as humanity to the successive Covid-induced lockdowns. Our all-human picnic was suddenly interrupted by a pandemic. The amenities and entertainment offered by the big cities, the technological possibilities of travel, or even the availability of new films whose production had stopped, were suddenly taken away from us. No one needs to be explained to how much frustration these limitations have contributed to. So will we be able to get used to the new “ending world” with its successive cataclysms? The reference to this question is the words spoken by one of the characters in the drama, which ironically highlight the extraordinary adaptability of humans:

Collective scene. Foto: Magda Hueckel/Arkiwum Artystyczne Teatru.

“And now you are what will be destroyed.

Get used to it.

You will get used to it.

Man can get used to anything.”

But are we actually able to give up the vision of an unlimited, ever-better world? How long would you be able to endure in your rooms, looking only through the glass at gloomy streets, empty fields, or immobile roads, knowing that you are allowed to meet people only in stores, where it is mandatory to keep one and a half meters distance? The strength of the protests against sanitation regimes suggests that not for very long.  And the end the world will rather endure – it is already enduring.

Małgorzata Anna Maciejewska, the author of the new version of the drama she plays with Picnic at Hanging Rock, reaching back to an event from 121 years ago, spreads before the viewer a panorama of the ongoing end of the world. At the same time, she develops the rather banal plot of a thriller novel into an all-encompassing landscape of human experience. Indeed, a popular, for some even cult story is rewritten. At the same time, the completely original dramatic version of the story is not limited to its contemporization, elaboration or new-reading, if only by a hair. This is because the new perspective of the work is determined primarily by the changed order of redistribution of characters’ voices and self-reflection on how we tell the stories of humanity and what comes of it.

As part of the changes in the redistribution of voices, women, who in the novel and perhaps even more so in the film were primarily objects of observation, admiration, but also elements of patriarchal fantasies established by traditional art, become the main guides to the world depicted and its commentators. The reflection on how humanity performs its self-representation revealed, among other things, in the novel’s narratives becomes most apparent through the mystery of the disappearance of four women during a trip to Hanging Rock. In both Joan Lindsay’s novel and Peter Weir’s film, this enigma is a source of a wealth of diverse interpretations and aesthetic fascinations. The creators of the production at the National Theater, however, decided to seek an answer not so much to the question of what led to the women’s disappearance, but rather to devote themselves to inquiring what mystery lies behind the plot gesture of Lindsay, who placed an unsolved riddle at the center of her novel, and why this riddle is so ruthlessly appealing to potential readers and viewers.

Anna Grycewicz (Ms. Greta), Paulina Szostak (Edyta), Michalina Łabacz (Miranda), Marta Wągrocka (Marion), Małgorzata Kożuchowska (Mademoiselle), Anna Lobedan (Ms. Lumley), Zuzanna Saporznikow (Irma), Justyna Kowalska (Blanche), Anna Bieżyńska (Lily), Katarzyna Pośpiech (Rosamunda). Foto: Magda Hueckel/Arkiwum Artystyczne Teatru.

The rewriting of ancient narratives, dramas or other cultural texts in contemporary theater has long since ceased to be a simple complement to the original or a subversive reworking of it. Under Maciejewska’s pen, and thanks to the outstanding skill and intellectual sensitivity of the actresses, actors and the entire ensemble, a rather free, somewhat unstable in its structure story is transformed into a work of absolute order, whose enormity and the importance of the issues presented give it a dynamism that is impossible to grasp in a grid of words, concepts, or other tools of cognition of the reality around us.

Women – a lifeline

To describe all the treatments that made up the original story of Picnic at Hanging Rock would make little sense. There are too many of them. Therefore, let me limit myself to highlighting those aspects of the show that seem most interesting.

In both the novel and the film, the primary character among the girls of the boarding school remains Miranda, who leads her two friends to the summits of Hanging Rock. Her friend Sara, due to her background (her current guardian took her from an orphanage), remains an insecure person, relegated to the background. Meanwhile, in Maciejewska’s drama, it is Sara who becomes Miranda’s mentor. Complementing the foreboding that accompanies the novel’s reading, Sara is portrayed as the child of a white man who was taken from his Aboriginal mother to be placed in an orphanage. Played at the National Theater alternately by two dark-skinned actresses, Bonnie Sucharska and Ifi Ude, she is a source of wisdom and strength from the Aboriginal revered Earth Mother Eingana. It is under her influence that Miranda sets out at the head of two other schoolmates to Hanging Rock. Each of the girls, however, has an important function to fulfill in the dramatic picture of the world. Michalina Labacz, who plays Miranda, fills her character with an extraordinary leadership power that goes much deeper than the possibilities set by her excellent acting technique. No less important character turns out to be Irma, who, thanks to Zuzanna Saporznikov, ultimately turns out to be a person of deep seriousness and calmness. However, before she achieves this state, she will go through a traumatic experience. She will be the only one among the missing to be found alive on the slope of Hanging Rock. However, this will not be the case in life. Just like the quest of the residents themselves, which represents the realization of the vocation of the girls chosen by the Rock to convey to them the truth hidden behind the veil of sleep. In this metaphysical order, Irma is rejected by the Rock as insufficiently mature to bear the burden of the epiphany. Significantly, the development of earlier events allows the audience to grasp what Irma’s lack of maturity is all about. In an innocent scene of the boarders’ game of fortune-telling using a daisy, Irma announces that she has won love. The other two girls, however, accuse her of cheating, as they could see right through that she had won the dream. The dream in the Aboriginal world order is the true reality, the other side of the world, which in conscious experience remains a mere illusion. Irma, however, has not matured to this stage and still dreams of freedom to love, of crossing the boundaries that constrain her, and is therefore not ready to meet the truth. So she returns to our world mute as anyone who, not being ready, has seen a god. Her conversations with the headmistress seem irrelevant. When asked by her fellow boarders about what she saw on the mountain, she remains silent, which leads to one of the key scenes in the story presented. The enraged boarders begin to corner her and threaten her. However, the residents’ aggression doesn’t grow out of Irma’s disregard for them or her alleged haughty attitude. The young women are terrified above all that the truth is hidden from them by the adults. They want to find out in order to get rid of their fears.  Meanwhile, Irma can only remain silent. Faced with such an unbearable situation, Edith Horton comes to the forefront of this peculiar rebellion. The same one who set off on her way to the top of the mountain but later, discouraged, turned back. During her confrontation with Irma, she announces that she herself will reveal the secret of the hill and begins to chalk up images of a shameless ritual and fabricated dead corpses to her friends, becoming a false prophet. In Paulina Szostak’s brilliant performance, the overweight, bored girl (this is what Edith looks like in the film version), transforms into a genuinely funny, but also remarkably annoying character.

In the foreground: Gabriela Musała (Wife of Colonel Fitzhubert), Wiesłau Cichy (Colonel Fitzhubert), in the background: Mateusz Kmiecik (Coachman Albert), Piotr Kramer (Michel Fitzhubert). Foto: Magda Hueckel/Arkiwum Artystyczne Teatru.

Such a colorful range of characters of the boarding house girls fundamentally changes their position and function in the story of Picnic at Hanging Rock. Unlike the group of boarding school girls in Weir’s film, who became the object of fascination of the male gaze for mysterious and ethereal beings, in the production on the stage of the National Theater they are transformed into fully causal characters, endowed with the potential to change the order in which the time of the turn of the 20th century trapped them.

To read PART II of this interview, go to this link. For Part III, click here.