Hard to say what makes good theater. You can describe the effect – “touched”, “familiar and yet radically new”, but what ultimately determines whether an evening at the theater really takes off remains unfathomable. In any case, with Ewelina Marciniak’s theater it is often as if she only moves a few spotlights and everything appears clear, new, sensible and always incredibly elegant. She spins dramatic threads calmly, she can omit entire storylines, and nothing is missing because she feels the heart of the story. Her pieces are easily accessible, and that doesn’t mean the popcorn consumability of a Simon Stone, who is maliciously said to make Netflix theater, but rather that of a perfectly composed menu. In short: eating bad food is almost impossible at Marciniak.
“I hate writing, so I couldn’t write about theatre. I’m a bad actress, so I don’t act. So my only way of expressing myself in theater was to become a director,” says Ewelina Marciniak in an interview in early August. She was born in Poland in 1984, studied directing at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. What sounds pragmatic has been enchanting theater Germany for some time. At Hamburg’s Thalia Theater she staged “The Boxer” based on Szczepan Twardoch and impressive “The Jacob books” by Olga Tokarczuk, her courageous access to “Johanna of Orleans” at the National Theater Mannheim brought her an invitation to the Berlin Theatertreffen. And now she’s at the Salzburg Festival with “Iphigenia”, again a co-production with the Thalia Theater.
In “Iphigenia” she also succeeds in a number of strong moments in the first half of the evening, although in the end the staging cannot keep up with “Johanna” or the “Jakobsbücher”. The experimental setup is perhaps too ambitious for that: Based on the ancient text by Euripides and the humanism drama “Iphigenie auf Tauris” by Goethe, the author Joanna Bednarczyk has written a new play. At Marciniak’s request, she should bring the story into the present, i.e. the myth of the father who sacrifices his daughter to order favorable winds from the gods in the Trojan War.
To protect her father, Iphigenia keeps quiet about abuse
Human sacrifice isn’t very fashionable these days, so that didn’t lead to anything. Marciniak and Bednarczyk come to the conclusion that most of the sacrifices people make today are giving up parts of themselves, their peace of mind, their needs in order to please, not to disturb order, to protect those close to them.
And so here aspiring pianist Iphigenia sacrifices her career after her father, Agamemnon, forces her to remain silent. Uncle Menelaus (Stefan Stern) had sexually molested Iphigenia for years, she finally wants to tell the truth. Too bad that Agamemnon, a dashing ethics professor (Sebastian Zimmler), is about to publish a book about perpetrators, victims and “Me Too”. What would it look like if the abuse came out now. Expect nothing from Mother Klytaimnestra (Christiane von Poelnitz), a successful actress. As long as you don’t let it get too big, she advises her daughter, it doesn’t matter. She also sacrifices her love for Achilles (Jirka Zett) in her grief. One by one, Iphigenia breaks all her fingers. So free, so brave, you can do it like that.
In the end, the piano catches fire: Iphigenia gave up her career to protect her father.
(Photo: Krafft Angerer)
Casually, Marciniak encourages a host of questions: Why do people think they have to make sacrifices to be liked? Is it more often women who sacrifice needs, and who or what are they protecting by doing so? How does society deal with victims? How about perpetrators? Why might the son who kills his mother be less sympathetic than the pedophile? Is there such a thing as a noble motive for violence?
On a simple, spacious platform (Mirek Kaczmarek) there is only a grand piano in front of a large mirror, as in a music institute. Again and again the actors break out in choreographies (by Dominika Knapik), also a distinctive ensemble of Marciniak’s theatre, as if the characters were dancing, which they cannot express in words. This looks great, probably takes a lot of work to make.
Director Ewelina Marciniak.
(Photo: Natalia Kabanov)
Actors who have worked with Ewelina Marciniak describe her as extremely demanding, one who marches to the test with a formulated plan. Her own ideas have to take a backseat, she makes announcements. At a time when theaters are discussing whether artistic directors or directors should actually be abolished completely because they have too much power, such an energetic management style seems rather suspicious. does she know Marciniak laughs sheepishly: “I used to always want everything, here and now and immediately, now I give myself more time, more patience so that the people I work with can follow me. I always want them to be more excited than intimidated. ” Directors shouldn’t be banned, but they should communicate better, because “after all, we know from Shakespeare how problematic power can be!”
Violence, she still says, is not something she wants to reproduce on stage, but she has to show it in order to talk about it. And that brings you back to “Iphigenia”: the great ensemble of the Thalia Theater verbosely unfolds the psychological family drama about violence, power, its abuse and the victim, describes the dilemma of being stuck with people who should be well-disposed and who, according to Menelaus, “must always act morally”. Iphigenia (the young version played brilliantly by Rosa Thormeyer, the older version also by her mother Oda Thormeyer) shares her pain without exaggerating as a victim, showing her wounds.
In the end there are too many open ends, there is no progress
The final hour takes place 20 years later on the island to which Iphigenia has retreated. She was unable to break the spiral of violence, trauma and her father are still haunting her. When her brother Orestes appears, she finally recognizes him as her mother’s murderer, but there is no consolation in the encounter either. Iphigenia stays behind, broken with the realization that there seems to be no way forward. And then the whole resolute concept frays, Marciniak fails in the last few meters due to her own demands, discourse, zeitgeist and yet at least to combine motifs from ancient myths into something new. There are too many open ends, and the run-up with which she started a story that actually calls for liberation ends with the piano burning. But even that looks beautiful.