A Vision Evolving Amid Polish Turmoil

Everyday life before the revolution was so clear, with opposite sides of democracy and totalitarianism facing off in a fundamental battle. That is how Wojciech Krukowski, founder and director of Akademia Ruchu, Poland’s most enduring experimental theater company, recalls the crucial ‘80s, when Poland’s communist regime was gradually undone.

Now, Krukowski says, everyday life is a muddle. With about 140 political parties tugging Polish democracy in 140 directions, “we’re free, but economically limited and very confused about what to do with our new freedoms.”

But he also calls the difficult present “a new epoch,” one which Akademia Ruchu (pronounced roo-hoo ), or Academy of Movement, has translated into its newest stage work being performed tonight through Sunday at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. Naturally, it’s titled “Everyday Life After the Great Revolution Two.”

Why two ?

Krukowski, speaking by phone from his Warsaw home, explained that the new piece is less a sequel and more of an evolution from Ruchu’s previous “Everyday Life After the Great French Revolution,” a complex parody in which pedestrians scurried aimlessly against a sterile, static background.

The ‘90s edition, in the Ruchu tradition of what Krukowski calls “visual narrative theater,” brings back the pedestrians, with the intrusion of crowding, hunger and loveless sex. The sobering contrast to Akademia Ruchu’s early, colorful, frolicksome street theater is striking to such observers as UCLA theater professor Anna Krajewska-Wieczorek, who first heard of Krukowski’s spontaneous street actions as a University of Warsaw student in 1968.

“After they fully organized as a group in 1973,” Krajewska-Wieczorek says, “Akademia Ruchu developed many works, not only in city streets but in rural open spaces, with the objective of mocking the system.

“They have been very inventive, and have brought something bright and unforgettable to the gloomy life under the old regime. But Wojciech is right when he says the time for such street actions is over. Their move toward theater spaces and museums reflects a more serious phase in their work.”

In fact, Krukowski’s desires have always taken his creations in two directions: the public spectacles that linked arms with the Solidarity labor union’s public protests during the ‘80s, and a technically demanding, multimedia performance style perhaps best appreciated in a well-equipped theater.

The influence of U.S. artists and movements provided a crucial push toward this synthesis: “There was Pop art, the performances of the Open Theatre, and the styles of creative street actions staged during anti-Vietnam War protests. We met with (director) Richard Schechner and the Bread and Puppet Theatre, and took in their ideas as well. John Cage, though, was the most important: His insights into Minimalism and creating dynamics within tradition styles, the uses of many media, how to pose mobility against immobility. These are at the foundation of all our work.”

This American connection continues with fellow Minimalist Robert Wilson, who has recently worked with Akademia Ruchu.

Suffused through Krukowski’s conversation, though, is a sense of regret--that the motivating spirit of Solidarity, stressing both democratic and spiritual values, has drowned in petty political infighting and unclear goals.

“I’m convinced that Poland must return to the Solidarity tradition of the early ‘80s,” he says.

Is this possible in the new free market of every Pole for himself?

“It has to be, even though the big themes of liberty and solidarity have given way to everyday problems of survival. We’re trying to make these images on stage, while realizing that our country has lost its beautiful vision.”