“Young people laugh at what my generation believed. And this is good". World-famous Polish theater director Krystian Lupa visited Moscow - his performance of The Seagull at the Alexandrinsky Theater was brought to the Golden Mask. Christian Lupa entered the art of Poland in the 1980s and set the path for its development for decades to come. His students are now shaping the face of the entire European theater
Christian Lupa — The New Times
Pan Lupa, your The Seagull is a play by a very young artist. How to remain a young artist Treplev when you are the age of the mature writer Trigorin?
What happens to us, we call maturity - it's really a very strange thing. The danger of this state is obvious both in Trigorin and in Arkadina. The image of Trigorin was written by Chekhov, it seems to me, as a result of a very personal experience. This is just an example of that compromise, which is usually called maturity: a betrayal of one's desires, dreams. It seems to me that the life of an artist in a person is much shorter than the life of a person himself. We can say that the artist lives in us as long as the age of a horse or dog lasts. The artist lives this short life and then dies. There is also something very personal in Chekhov's attitude to Treplev - a kind of nostalgia for what has already passed. What Chekhov considers forever lost. Even the fact that Chekhov kills Treplev is a manifestation of a kind of envy of a mature person for the one in whom youth lives. There are wonderful words from Rilke: he feels that his childhood is flooded by the sea, like a ship that has gone under water, to which there is no access.
Unlike Chekhov, you don't kill Treplev in your The Seagull. Don't you envy?
I call myself an “eternal boy” because by nature I never felt mature. I have always been closer to young people than people of my generation. I don't know, maybe that's my secret. And some people think it's bullshit. Eternal youth is a form of disability...
Magnificent disaster
I believe it is the duty of every human being to agree to survive the catastrophe. We are always afraid of catastrophes. We are always afraid to throw away something that others have already appreciated. We don't have the courage. And here you can try to take advantage of the catastrophe that comes from outside.
After all, catastrophes happen in life - a sudden separation from people, illness, betrayal, a change in the environment to which you are used to. Such events seem to throw us out of the apartment. We need to take advantage of this in order to have time to throw away our furniture and start living. Or at least try to arrange the furniture differently in the new apartment. People are afraid of such situations. This, of course, is a metaphor, but it always seems to a person that he will be able to save himself if he manages to create a familiar environment in a new place.
I have had two such accidents. The first was experienced by me simply as a disease that I myself could not diagnose - like AIDS. I'm talking about the moment of the collapse of my troupe, which I created in Eleni-Gur. I just physically didn't know what to do. At that time, my friend brought me a text that I myself would never have read. These were Musil's "Dreamers". In texts, a person can find ground for change. And go in a completely different way. And the person who helped me survive the second disaster ...
What was this disaster?
It was the catastrophe of the end of the life of another "horse" in me. So, it was Thomas Bernhard, a man who is leading a powerful attack on the current state of the modern Christian European, "serious person", "patriot" and so on. You know, after the Second World War, the gap between the “old” and “new” people began to be felt especially hard. Then, in the sixties, there was a sexual revolution in the West. And the waves of these explosions continue to change a person.
I am very interested in this topic, this is exactly what our performance about Andy Warhol's group is about, about the sixties, when the conflict between the former man and the one who had not yet been born reached its peak. This old man - regardless of generation - is built on the model of a person of the 19th century, Christian-European culture. A rationalist man, a serious man, "man - that sounds proud." Closed, dressed in a shell, like a representative of crustaceans. And this deception today, the new man can no longer stand. Can't stand the lies of our culture. The older generation calls its position the defense of values that cannot be abandoned. And the younger generation is called barbarians who destroy the sacred. But it seems to me that one cannot call holy what people no longer perceive as truth. Young people come to watch old performances and perceive it as a lie, not as a value. And I'm on their side. We must see not only the value of our culture, but also its hypocrisy.
Truths are stained with lies
But after all, "young" is not a synonym for "good", youth does not exclude mediocrity. And this is no longer a question of generation, but a question of the quality of creativity.
I don't mean to say that tradition is useless. Because you can make a new live performance in the old language. And on the material of antiquity. And on the material of the XIX century. But there is something that I once called the taste of truth. Many of the "truths" our fathers believed in are now tainted with lies. So it's not about the language, it's about the way you use it.
Is it possible that a person has not forgotten the taste of truth, having become “mature”?
Indeed, it is sad that there are so few people who could not lose from their own maturity. It is not only the fault of the people, but also the fault of the culture, that it brings people to a kind of superficial maturity. The fault of a culture that is afraid of the helplessness of people of the age of "immaturity". The fault of the cult of success. We have to pretend that we are mature. We have to pretend to be successful. Otherwise, we are expelled from life. Therefore, people try as early as possible to take a place to which they have not yet matured. Even though they are basically kids. On the example of World War II, we saw that normal people, artisans, having received the status of "mature people", become murderers. Modern man has a fatal attitude towards maturity. Such maturity is made of bad material. It seems to me that people who have matured correctly, even having changed, have not lost touch with youth and are able to understand the young. And they understand a lot better than the young, because the young, of course, cannot understand everything. Although the younger generation is deeply confident in their own genius. And I believe that in each new generation there is something that was not in the previous one. This is the so-called instinct of modernity. Therefore, the things of today grow out of the younger generation. Therefore, the reaction of the younger generation is litmus. We must be sensitive to whether the younger generation understands what we are saying. It's not a fashion issue. This is a sign of relevance. It's a test to see if we're dead. Or we are still alive.
