Theatre of Moist woman force [polemic]

I expected to know that Monika Shredder, 1 of the iconic figures in culture for the left, compromises with values as crucial to this formation as respect for work, unchangeable employment, respect for the dignity of the another individual or tolerance for differentness should immediately provoke a powerful outrage on the left side of the political spectrum. To my deep sorrow, I was wrong. Reactions are weak, late, and they effort to blur a simple case.

Balcerowicz restructuring, writing practices

I do not see how much outrage that the manager of Dramatic Theatre simply lied in an interview with Onetu, motivating the disposing of a large group of workers with savings, while firing 28 people accepted 27. An interview with Magdalena Rigamonti says that in the name of saving the full boat she must get free of the ballast, including young women. She introduces herself in a tragic situation and creates herself as strong as Andrzej Duda in a celebrated statement that ‘the president must be tough’.

The very fact that Sczępka confesses that he does not fight with the organizer of the institution – that is, in the capital city hall – for additional resources to guarantee the existence of the squad should origin scandal on the left. Without any ‘but’ or dilution attempts. In addition, it turns out that from behind the Balcerowicz “restructuring” looks well practiced for 8 years Law and Justice in Culture The practice of taking over institutions and casting them with their people according to the ideological key. The practice, which always means intellectual force against “old” workers, always ends with at least a fewer people who gotta deal with trauma and always turns out to be based on fears and obsessions that consequence in a wide scope of toxic behaviors.

The analogy between the PiS practices and the actions of Strzęka in the Warsaw Drama Theatre develops Karolina Felberg in text for Oko.press. We share with Karolina the experience of working at the Adam Mickiewicz Institute at the time of its acquisition by the second throw of the Pisan Revolution and we know what we say erstwhile we say it is simply a painful process. What this acquisition looked like in IAM I described in a political criticism sold by ‘The Desert Dialogue’, whose first number papers the dismantling of culture by right-wing denominations.

The press reports show that the theatre manager together with the Collegiate Jęczka Collegiate had nothing to do with the fact that the implementation of their ideas would force the poorly paid employees of the administration and the service of longer work and would deprive them of their ability to make extra money, which is simply a condition for a decent life erstwhile the parent institution gets hopelessly low rates. About wage increases and another key problems for the left The crack in the interviews, as far as I can tell, didn't even close. He caught many of these contradictions in his very good comment Luke Drewniak.

This, in my opinion, is the root of the problem: the individual declaring peaceful values, tolerance and coexistence uses toxic and violent methods of governance (because there is no serious "management" here), characteristic of the literate cultural authorities, including the neoliberal approach of starving culture.

Maybe it's not worth it.

This is the essence of the text by Paulina Januszewski. A shake in Dramatic: possibly it's worth trying, though? The text is long, contains quite a few digression and styling. The polemic with each of the points passes with the goal, so I will focus on the basic thesis of the article and any peculiarly symptomatic claims for me.

Let us first return Januszewski's justice. She writes: "The release of half of the squad in Dramatic while employing "her people" is regardless of the feminist intentions of the Shrunk mechanics that does not deal with left-wingness, but loses to capitalism." However, this message appears somewhere in the mediate of the text to be immediately covered with considerations about the patriarchy and the fact that violent men are allowed more and Shrub less.

But first things first. Januszewska begins her text by recalling a movie about teenagers, in which the heroine drops the crown of the prom queen and breaks it into pieces. According to the author of the text, this motion allows us to free ourselves from the logic of a conflict for power, most likely invented by men and to accomplish a sisterhood. How's that for Dramatic Director? As I realize it, the author of the text suggests to us that Shrek is only a victim of a strategy on which besides much weight has fallen. Why? due to the fact that she's a woman, pushed by a patriarch into a vertical power structure.

Let me make my own pop culture mention here. In animated films, in scenes of ski chases, a common gag is simply a situation where the hero loses control of the boards rushes right into the tree. Then we have a change of shot, and we see only 2 ski tracks, each of which goes around a spruce or pine tree: the hero in a supernatural way avoided collision. He performs a akin play in his text Januszewska: he knows texts in which toxic behaviours are described, he knows about dismissals, about the exploitation of employees, but someway he manages to skip the subject from the left and right.

For it says: “What would you say if you had done something like this now? Monika Shredder? If she had actually gone back 2 steps to do 10 ahead, getting free of the fetishized in the man-centric planet of obsession with power and talking about the Theatre, which was expected to become a feminist and thus an equal institution of culture, she invited everyone, or perhaps, above all, actors and the public? She threw them the crown pieces she got as principal? Is there area for everyone and everyone in Dramatic? Or is the Fuzzy right to go to the rhyme? The cheeky girl in me says, "Fuck off with everything stiff and patriarchal." But the socialist reminds me: not at the expense of people working. So what's the deal with the revolution? Is it possible to carry her out without offerings and cutting her heads off without ending up in matriarchial Bolshevikism? All answers can be correct. Or totally fake. And I don't think there's any good or bad. However, I realize how hard it is for drama observers in Dramatic (me too) to abandon moral categories and, alternatively of letting uncertainty come to light, to offer judgments.”

As far as I realize this sentence, it is by firing people and driving them (according to press reports) into a tense breakdown that can lead to a truly feminist art. This is an introduction to an analysis of a feminist theatre that may should be born by terror, and to a boring standard of co-existence within the institution, in line with the Labour Code and mostly accepted social standards. In the end, the author decides that only erstwhile we see the artistic effect of the work will we be able to actually measure Monica Shrugka.

Personally, I think that is simply a peculiar statement. Here we cannot appeal to law and universal values specified as dignity, due to the fact that judgement will only be possible in retrospect. If Hex and another performances will not fulfill their hopes (in their way: what?), they will not be feminist and progressive adequate (in their content, due to the fact that work practices are not subject to evaluation), then and only then will we be able to say, "You fired these people unnecessarily."

Personally, I am of the opinion that the artistic effect in a public institution cannot be the only criterion for evaluation. Especially due to the fact that artistic evaluation is different from moral or legal evaluation of the activities of the institution and its head.

Voivode is no excuse

There is inactive a lot in Januszewski's text about the voivode of Constanty Radzichille and his antifeministic obsessions. As many people most likely cheered for Monica Strzeczka in a court dispute with the then-written voivode. I do not understand, however, how does its emergence affect the anti-working and violent practice of the chief and Dramatic Collective? Is it revenge on the squad for the difficulties caused by right-wing politics, or is it that the unpleasantness of the recently appointed manager justifies all her actions?

I do not know what the connection with the current situation is with the views of the current Polish Ambassador to Lithuania, who, as a typical of the right-wing government in Mazowsze, has made the life of the Warsaw City Hall more hard not only on the controversial issue, in his opinion, of the director, but besides on the extension of the area of paid parking.

The next passages of the text are devoted to how Lupie and Polanski got distant with. but Lupa, who seemingly came out of the Swiss performance with a dry foot, does not head any institution. Should he be directing? If he does it in an insulting way for actors or technicians – no. But we're not talking about Lupe here.

The author here uses a classical pierce spin so willingly utilized by politicians. Jarosław Kaczyński erstwhile asked about irregularities in the PiS usually responds to statements in the style: “Donald Tusk is worse”. It is an effective but questionable mechanics that allows distraction from the heart of the problem and forces you to deal with side threads.

So let us be clear: neither the actions of Konstanty Radziwiłł, nor the fact that the capital manager of the cultural office in a very written kind closed the poetic centre operating at the Śródmieślski home of Culture, nor the fact that the PRL in Kalisz was named as a full acting group, nor the fact that the people of Gliński did the dirty work, it does not substance whether Monika Strzępka breaks the law of work and manages the theatre in a completely non-left and simply evil way.

Januszewska besides bends, intertwining in her article a mention to Hex Agnieszka Szpila, who will be the basis for the flagship premiere of the Dramatic Theatre in December, on a problem that has been warming commentators from the beginning – “The Moist Lady”, that is, the introduction of the idol monument to the theatre and the ideology behind it. It is appropriate to commend the author for noticing that the symbol that he intended to combine and remind of the mild can besides be a tool of exclusion. Without developing besides much of this subject, the problem of Jępkow's ideology from the beginning seems to be the adoption based on references to the nature of female-male dichotomies, which leaves no area for negotiations, alliances or the ever-increasingly discussed sex fluidity.

Mushroom Stand

Januszewski's text besides reads: "The focus of all criticism on the Strzepka, although sometimes customs and necessary, takes distant actors and actors working hard on fresh performances the subjectivity and energy to change the institution and to give it to the full community, alternatively than 1 artist, in fact." Let's just halt for a moment.

Monika Szczepka, accepting the directorial nomination, became formally liable for the full theatre. Of course, the manager does not gain with the function of divine powers and is incapable to straight watch over all omniscient eyes. Therefore, its or its work is to take care of a good system: 1 that allows to carry out tasks efficiently while respecting the rights and dignity of all employees. Monika Szczepka is liable for dismissals or an avalanche increase in the number of accidents at work (as read in 1 of the articles). That's why it makes sense to focus criticism on the principal.

It is true, however, that since Sparrow has appointed (less of formality) a collective governing body, in fact we should look much more closely (what she does in Karolina Felberg's quoted text) to those who are part of that body and not forget that they are besides partially liable for what is happening in Dramatic.

The remainder of the conviction suggests, however, that we should not focus on the Shrek, due to the fact that those mediocre actors who have been selected for the fresh order or passed the directorial "vibe check" work hard and feel insecure. I believe that those actors who do not appeal to their colleagues and their dismissed colleagues besides deserve as harsh a criticism as possible. possibly I would not go so far as to usage the word “disgrace”, but deficiency of solidarity among workers and the desire to wait out is simply a cancer which is active in Polish cultural institutions.

The murdered Russian writer Anna Politikowska wrote about the attitude of the mushroom: I'll hide under the leaf, and possibly they won't break me. specified mushrooming allows political denominations to do whatever they like with institutions. Januszewska writes about "receiving subjectivity", but nothing takes subjectivity more than no objection to evil. All the more so in the name of “my project” – possibly they won’t contact mine.

Culture work in culture to exchange

I am certain that the Warsaw authorities will yet wash their hands. After all, who cares about the environmental storm in culture? It would be large if there was a scandal; if the revelation of the unacceptable methods of managing the Dramatic Theatre by Monika Shrekka became an excuse to discuss what work relations in culture should look like. If, after years of dunging culture at the central level, the impulse for renewal came out of the urban institution – that would be something. I dream that the minimum of civilization in the workplace, especially in public institutions, which should set standards, is that as a consequence of the management's actions, no 1 lands in a psychiatrist.

Unfortunately, that's far from it. Although the deficiency of employees in business forces a slow change in the culture of work, the sphere of freedom that art institutions should be remains paradoxically far behind. After Onet published the talks with Shrug, I made a long comment on my wall about the case. In consequence to him, my theatre director, a friend of mine, wrote: “I do not see in this article any description of violence, scattered tobacco on the desk or that individual has broken down, that is no charge/proof.”

So it seems that before culture changes, it will take a long time.

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Karol Templewicz – in 2012-2021 he worked at the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, where he led the Asia Programme for 3 years, now trying to stay distant from cultural institutions. He has published, among others, in the "Popular Week" and online writing of the fresh Periphery.