Title page and the table of contents of the issue.

Er(r)go… ,

…what a theatre! Help yourselves: intercultural theatre, transcultural theatre, ultracultural theatre, metacultural theatre, multicultural theatre, postdramatic theatre, folk theatre, ritualized theatre and theatrilized rituals, amateur theatre, professional theatre, country theatre, ethnotheatre, anthropological theatre, contaminated by ethnology, theatre of art, avant-garde theatre, Theatre of Sources, polyphonic theatre, multigeneration theatre, indigenous theatre, independent theatre, theatre which-is-not, and on top of that anti-opera, ethno-performance, multiperformance, solo-performance, dreadful pantomime and the Country Housewives Association. It’s clear now – “[t]heatre is not a newspaper!” Among those theatres and non-theatres a variety of cultural ebbs and flows, cultural transfers, transcultural practices, implied transgressions and thematized transgressions, cultural penetrations, liquidity of cultural identities and mutual glances, cultural revivalisms, dramaturgic recyclings, artistic patchworks, progressive over-writings, borrowed stories, intellectual jugglery, tradaptations, chaotic wordplays, rescuing destructions, hybridizations, interpenetrations, renarrations, revocations, reinterpretations, remixes, recontextualizations – in any case, cultural motion is on the rise.

A lot is happening, too. Subjects intro-duce and redefine themselves in front of one another, Afro-French citizens are outraged at the treatment of black actors’ bodies, out of darkness emerges Hottentot Venus, and the victims keep staring at us in silence. Meanwhile, an individual is entangled in the dialectical process of historical development, clusters of pedestrians walk down the streets with hyenas on chains, a contemporary Hindu woman flounders between local and global discourses, Europe is growing, getting fat, puffing itself up and gathering steam and then rides and tames the bull, the self-conscious, self-feeling and self-responsible body dances the Odissi dance, dramatic texts pour out unpredictably from pre-defined forms, twenty female extras of different ages declaim a choral poem on fucking, the I asks who is I, Welfare Management Organisation privatizes refugees, gender dynamics leaves a sensual and feminine mark, but unfortunately the spectacle is disrupted by right-wing extremists, and access to the theatre is blocked by the Rosary Crusade. Spectator’s cowardice. Jelinek runs life off the theatre, and in all that stage chaos circulate dramatis personae. A whip would come in handy.

There’s more: strange, wild and perverse things happen in the forest. (“What the fuck do you think an English forest is for?” asks Butterworth rhetorically). Brecht puts it in even simpler terms: “To hell with reason!” And so a wealthy and hardworking ant offers food and shelter to a grasshopper, demanding sexual disposal for herself and others, a man shrunk to the size of a dwarf finds himself in a cognac bottle, Jason and Medea’s sons are poisoned by mistake, Tiresias blinds the elite, multiplied Cassandra hosts a popular TV show, Orestes starts up a dance school with his partner, Phaedra sings a hymn to William Blake’s lyrics, some general regularly eats up a historical map of Europe but while biting off the pieces still respects its old borders, and the mythical tradition radiates both in the foreground and the background as it remains unaware of its own downgrading. And in addition, feasting on Shakespeare, brain spiced up with masala in Molière, roasted quails, saffron, sorbet, Ganges water, leishmaniasis and dum-dum fever. Essentially, the spectator is redundant.

So what shall we do? Nothing but stimulate, irritate, excite and infuriate.

Wojciech Kalaga
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4874-9734

P.S.: The present issue is guest-edited by Professor Eugenia Sojka of the University of Silesia.
We also wish to remind our Readers and Authors that – beginning with issue No. 40 (1/2020) – Er(r)go will become bilingual: we will be publishing articles in both Polish and English. The cover of this issue heralds these forthcoming changes.

The article is an attempt to outline new methodological perspectives on performance studies which derive from Stephen Greenblatt’s Cultural Mobility Manifesto, published in 2010. It analyses the concept of “contact zones”, introduced for the first time in the humanities by Mary Luise Pratt in 1993, and  subsequently developed  by Stephen Greenblatt and Donna J. Haraway, demonstrating how it reformulates the present understanding of “performance”. According to the author of the article, the contact zones, intended as a space of encounter of heterogenic subjects, allow scholars to have a closer look at emergent strategies, meanings, and contingencies of the present cultural reality. To explain her argument, the author analyses two study cases: the performance Exhibit B by Brett Bailey from 2013, and an exhibition of photographer Pieter Ugo, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue SeaatMuseuColeçãoBerardo, Lisbon (05.07.2018 – 07.10.2018).  

The article is focused on “rewriting” classic dramas as a tendency which is representative for dramaturgy of the second half of the 20th century. This phenomenon is strictly related to the paradigm shift in literature and theatre. “Rewriting” is based on re-interpretation and re-contextualisation of the well-known literary myths, and as a method of writing it helps to discover the new meanings of classic literature. “Rewriting” can also be considered as a transfer of the original classic text to a new cultural, social, and historical reality. The article is an attempt to characterise this kind of dramaturgy using selected plays of Heiner Müller and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Myths evolve continuously and they are influenced by transfer; in this way they cross the boundary between ages, geocultural areas, and art genres. This dynamic system of symbols, archetypes, images, and schemes has been integrated by culture and stimulates the artistic activity of the 21st century. This also happens when it comes to the playwrights and stage producers of the post-Yugoslav countries. One should point to the extraordinary transformations of myths by Ivana Sajko (Croatia), Ljubomir Ðurković (Montenegro), and Jeton Neziraj (Kosovo). As a result of such strategies as e.g. prefiguration, transposition, and reinterpretation, ancient and modern contents overlap and create new quality. The theatrical plays which are based on such texts are other examples of transfer and transformation depending on the performative circumstances of the exposition. Moreover, these productions are transcultural and transgressive.

The article discusses cultural untranslatability in drama and its meaning for cultural transfer in theatre on the example of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem (2009) and its Polish translation by Krzysztof Puławski (2013). Jerusalem is full of cultural references, especially in terms of English literary and folk traditions, as well as political and social allusions, which would have influenced the Polish reception of the play. The analysis of the play’s cultural aspects is based on Edward Balcerzan’s taxonomy of untranslatability. The issues this article discusses include: the untranslatability of quotation, connotation, and language use.

Scholars Michel Espagne and Michael Werner introduced the term “cultural transfer” to humanities. The transfer is a two-sided and creative process. In the case of cultural transfer, each object (concept, law systems, ideas, commodities, literary or theatrical conventions, etc.) not only are transferred to a new context, but also acquire a new meaning.  Cultural exchange is not simply the circulation of knowledge and ideas as they are in their source environment but their reinterpretation in a new context. The article aims at analysing cultural transfer basing on Jatinder Verma’s tradaptations in intercultural theatre. It tackles such issues as the processes of cultural relocation, linguistic negotiations, heteroglossia, and new minority theatres. The author also portrays the evolution of defining and understanding of performativity, speakability, and actability in contemporary reflections on the translation of drama, and their impact on the cultural transfer of theatrical ideas and conventions.    

The author of this article attempts to assess the influences of Brecht’s theory on the literary production by contemporary German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig. The author follows their transgressions and transpositions based on selected examples of his plays. Referring to the definition of transgression given by Grzegorz Petrek, he attempts to analyse such issues as acting, alienation, the meaning of text and image in Brecht’s drama, as well as its didactic and political potential. With regard to drama and theatre in German, Schimmelpfennig has been under an immense influence of Brecht’s ideas and practices.

As a point of departure the author comments on the fragmentary (quotation-like) presence of Shakespeare in contemporary culture. Then he goes on to use Roman Jakobson’s model of communication to analyse several examples of how the Shakespeare quotation has been appropriated by means of transference into a new context. Using Jakobson’s model enables us to study the changes which the original text undergoes in the process of cultural transmission.

In the Polish dramatic works of the 21st century, a group of texts dedicated to the phenomenon of cultural mobility can be distinguished. They become a literary proof of the existence of dynamic “contact zones” between the local and global, domestic and worldwide, or familiar and foreign. This article aims to discuss selected dramatic works in reference to the concept of cultural transfer. Three texts written for the theatre (The Sexual Life of Savages by Marcin Cecko, Caliban’s Death by Magda Fertacz, and Sorrows of the Tropics by Mateusz Pakuła) are subject to analysis. The issue of confrontation between a European and representatives of other cultures addressed in these works in a variety of ways testifies to their authors’ interest in the assumptions of post-colonialism and posthumanities. The works under investigation are highly dependent on the social and civilizational context, constituting an artistic form of reaction to the profound migration changes under way on the European continent. The authors use various symbolic codes and strategies for representing the world not with the aim of comparing different cultures, but as a starting point for reflection on the dynamics of the process of cultural interaction. Moreover, one of the central issues taken into consideration is the question of identity of particular individuals portrayed as they come into contact with the Other. Apart from the concept of cultural transfer, the examination of the aforementioned dramatic works involves Wolfgang Welsch’s idea of transculturalism, Stephen Greenblatt’s concept of cultural poetics, and the findings of ethnopoetics.  

Elfriede Jelinek is recently one of the most frequently staged German-speaking authors in Poland, although theater artists have been taking to this dramaturgy for quite a long time. The aim of the article is to look at the process of acquiring Jelinek's writting by Polish theater directors, using a concept of culture transfers. Discussing the winding road of the Austrian writer to Polish scenes, I point out intermediaries (translators, directors) who became her ambassadors in Poland, and I also discuss the adaptation processes conducive conditions. Not without significance are the aesthetic changes in Polish theater, stimulated from the West for the last twenty years, which gave Polish artists tools to tackle this difficult, experimental and very sensual drama

A growing interest in tradition and memory, as well as a strong need for "taking root" in the environment are nowadays manifested, among others, in the flourishing of various spectacles based on folklore, growing out of the old folk tradition to explore it in different ways. Such spectacles have been and still are the domain of amateur theatres operating in the rural environment, outside the mainstream theatrical life, which accounts for little interest exhibited by researchers,  theatrologists and ethnographers alike. To change such an attitude it is necessary to undertake thorough field research in order to describe the phenomenon of amateur ritual theatres and their condition in the contemporary times in the context which is most appropriate for them, such as folklorism, postfolklorism or revivalism. Therefore, the reflections contained in the article have become an introduction to this type of research and they aim at exploring the possibility of using the concept of cultural transfer in such research. It seems interesting to trace the paths of transmission of traditional folk culture content, that is folklore, which took place and continues through a number of ritual theatres, in the network of conditions which they are subjected to, still operating in the ever-changing cultural reality hugely affected by the media. It is also highly interesting to offer a preliminary diagnosis of the goals set by the initiators and authors of this transfer.

This text explores changes taking place in the Indian classical dance Odissi under the influence of western concepts, ideas and practices in dance and theatre. Taking in view the aspects of cultural transfer defined by Dominik Pick, I undertake an analysis of cultural transfer in the teaching methodology and the practice of contemporary Odissi dancers in India. I base the analysis on the example of the dance institute Nrityagram and the dancer Sharmila Mukherjee. In both these cases, I take in view the socio-cultural context in India, economic liberalisation which opened the access to the global market, and generated a mobility, specifically of the migrating dancers. Thus, I consider the cultural actors who are the „migrating dancers” learning new practices for body conditioning, dance techniques and easily carry in and incorporate these into their “home” practices. Amongst them are also dancers who draw inspirations from European dance styles. Further, I describe and analyse the western ideas, concepts and practices as the objects of the transfer. Finally, I investigate the process of assimilating these objects, what is the effect of applying those practices in Odissi dance and what are the transformations taking place.

W artykule rozpatrywany jest wpływ zasad estetycznych ekspresjonizmu na literaturę rosyjską XX wieku w oparciu o wybraną twórczość takich autorów jak m. in. Aleksiej Riemizow, Andriej Bieły, Jewgienij Zamiatin, Borys Pilniak. Zwrócenie uwagi na utwory pisarzy pierwszego popaździernikowego dziesięciolecia pozwala autorowi artykułu wykazać, że ekspresjonizm de facto uformował się jako strategia artystyczna determinująca rozwój ówczesnych kierunków i prądów literackich.

Summary

The aesthetic principles of the expressionism and its destiny in Russian literature

The influence of expressionism on the Russian literature is considered in this article, which is designated by a number of authors: A.Remizov, A.Belyj, E.Zamjatin, B.Pil'njak. Addressing to the works of the writers of the first post-October decades allows the researcher to state that expressionism became an artistic intention, which influenced trends of the literature of those years.

The Land of Aeternal Hapiness is Wojciech Sitek's review article dedicated to the first monograph in the Polish language, dedicated to films on coming of age. Karolina Kostyra, the author of the book Wiosenna bujność traw. Obrazy przyrody w filmach o dorastaniu,  observes that within the coming of age  genre nature affects young people in a particularly significant way. During puberty, it is always so fertile and expansive that it abducts the adolescent into its depths and transforms them forever, preparing them to face adult life. At times, the publication, which nominally represents the discipline of film studies, transmogrifies into a general reflection upon the world and the place of the human in its all-encompassing order. The Author attempts to penetrate the essence by resorting to a variety of sources: she seeks adequate tropes in the Jungian mythographic criticism, she alludes to the motifs of magical and religious symbols as described by Mircea Eliade, and follows Bruno Bettelheim in reflecting upon the externalizing function of a folk tale. Her personal, emotionally vested reflection and the melancholy tone of the book closely correspond with the overarching themes of the coming=of-age films. The yearning thus has its source in the experiences of the proatonists as well as in the personal quest of the Author, who remains vividily engaged in her account of the tales of the borderlands between childhood and adulthood. 

A critical note on Irish Crime Fiction by Brian Cliff.

This critical note is devoted to Stacy Alaimo's "Exposed. Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times" published in 2016 by University of Minnesota Press. It summarises the chapters included in Alaimo's book, reconstructs their key concepts, and presents the problems they aim to tackle.

English abstracts of feature texts of the present issue of Er(r)go.

Information and guidelines for potential Contributors.

The colophon of the issue.