The Polish director arrives at the Teatros del Canal with ‘Imagine’, a work in which he vindicates the hippie utopia and the humanism of the 1960s
He is not looking for answers in one of those dystopias that have been so present for years in books, series, movies or video games. He does not project his anxiety and his fear of the future into an apocalyptic fantasy. It does the opposite. Go back to a moment that seems stopped in time, the one in which a generation dreamed of a world without countries, borders, wars or religionsin which pacifism, hedonism, drugs, spirituality, sexual freedom and a vindication of individuality coexisted as a response to a consumer society that decides for everyone.
It was the 60’s the time of the counterculturethe communes, the beatniks, the hippies and 68 in Paris, and it is the place where the Polish director returns Kristian Magnifying Glass in his new montage, imaginein which part of the figure and the song of John Lennon to explore the end of that utopia his generation dreamed of and to wonder if any of those dreams could achieve a more humanistic world today. Why speak now of utopia? “Because for my generation, the end of utopia has been something very painful. It seemed to us that we were witnesses or active participants in something that could be the beginning of a revolution of the human being, a human being more aware of himself and a better managed world”, explains the director in an interview with this newspaper last Monday in Madrid. “Every individual deserves a moment of utopia. Reality is unbreathable,” writes Lupa in imagine.
Krystian Lupa is still, at 78 years old, one of the great European directors, as well as an intellectual reference and a total artist who not only directs his actors, but also translates and adapts the texts he brings to the stage, as well as designing the lighting and scenery for his plays. On October 18, Lupa returned to Spain to represent for the third time in Catalonia one of his legendary productions, Ritter, Dene, Voss, which premiered in 1996 in Krakow with the same three performers who continue to represent it today. A text of Thomas Bernhard, an author for whom Lupa feels a fascination that has resulted in the staging of at least half a dozen of his works. After his visit to Barcelona, the Polish director arrives with imagine this friday at Canal Theaters in Madrid, a five-hour show that premiered last April at the Powszechny Theater of Łódź, co-producer of the production together with the Powszechny Theater of Warsaw and the Prospero Extended Theater network.
We were going in an ecological direction in the face of global threats, but Putin redirected us towards that idea of man as beast and that return to cruelty and crime “
“You’re not alone, we are all terrified by this social and political collapse, this ailment that has atrophied everything and that we don’t know if it’s the fault of lies, hate or fear”, says one of the characters in the play and, despite being aware that there are many who condescendingly observe that hippie utopia, Krystian Lupa maintains that there is no nostalgia exercise in this montage: “Nostalgia is an experience that we love and at the beginning of this work it flourished in us, but Putin ended it.” The team began the process of creation and rehearsals in 2021 and, when the war in Ukraine went from being a threat to something real, “we saw that it took us away from that initial idea of tolerance, empathy and understanding. We were going in an ecological direction in the face of global threats, but Putin redirected us towards that idea of man as a beast and that return to cruelty and crime that trample human dignity.” On stage, one of the characters says: “Putin is the god of transformation. He transforms them (Russian youth) into shooting machines, into video game figures.”
containers of hate
Lupa believes that in these times, countries have become “containers of hate and many times national identity is perceived like this: I wouldn’t be Polish if I didn’t hate my brother and, if they take this away from me, I don’t really know what it means to be Polish.” And the same goes for religion, which is a container of collective and personal resentment of hatred and aggression, but if we analyze it, no one knows where God is anymore. Those who govern now in Poland are putting us into this smelly corpse and no one can revive it because the rulers are, unfortunately, seconded by a large part of society, stunned by the new propaganda of the old values.
Polish director Krystian Lupa./
imagine it is divided into two parts. The first takes place in a space full of dilapidated armchairs and sofas, a place where a leader named Antonin (let him be Artaud is almost obvious, but Lupa also plays with the figure of Saint Anthony) has summoned to a kind of wake those who accompanied him in that attempt at revolution. And there they parade their own John Lennon, Susan Sontag, Janis Joplin, Patti Smith or Timothy Leary, although none use their names on stage. The director explains that, at the beginning of the process, he asked his actors to choose one of the symbols of that time and draw on his personality to build his characters. The second part of the work focuses on the effects of the end of utopias, with the projection on the screen of images related to wars, migrations and ecological collapse in an attempt, Lupa points out, “to capture the inner experience of being human, that intangible and elusive part of the world that does not let us breathe and there I try an experience like that of Saint Anthony and we wonder if, like him, today’s man can go to the desert to cleanse himself and get rid of falsehood and see his interior , that self hidden by so much dirt”.
Despite everything, Krystian Lupa does not believe in the end of utopia, which “will exist as long as the human being exists and, as long as the world is not ideal, a sensible man will carry within himself the image of a possible world, utopia is like God, a spiritual energy. With imagineadds the director, “we wanted to create a show, although Putin did not let us, in which to say that the planet is our god, our country, our new religion and that is observed in the younger generations. And we do not envy our children, who in 40 years will have to face the catastrophe that is coming.”
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