Lupa referred to Szczepkowska in his international scandal. “This lie is incomprehensible”

In Geneva, the premiere of a play directed by Krystian Lupa, scheduled for the first half of June, was canceled at the last minute. The production based on the novel by WG Sebald, on which the festival in Avignon, the Paris Odeon and the Triennale di Milano collaborated, had a budget of 930,000. francs, which translates into about PLN 4.3 million. The management of the Comédie de Genève announced that the project was abandoned due to “difficulties in communication” and “differences in the philosophy of work” between the head of the institution and the technical team on the one hand, and the artistic direction of the project and other teams.

The situation in which director Krystian Lupa and actor and costume designer Piotr Skiba started shouting and insulting Agnieszka Zgieb, the translator, after she asked for a break, was particularly shocking for the Swiss team. Then the director was supposed to make a fuss with the technical team, which did not do their job as Lupa had imagined. The Polish artist recalls that he apologized for his outbursts. The technical team of the theater issued a statement accusing the Polish team of “drunk games”, creating an “overwhelming atmosphere”, “humiliation” and writes about “work with tears in the eyes”. “We were accompanied by terror, which we have never experienced before in our profession. Should art continue to be a machine to destroy the people who co-create it?” – theater employees ask.

Krystian Lupa responds to the allegations in the first interview

Krystian Lupa in an interview with Ewa Kaleta for “Gazeta Wyborcza” () describes the international scandal from his own perspective. He emphasizes that working on the play resembles, in his opinion, a “battle”, in which one fights, among others, with the “resistance of matter” and people, as well as “inertia” and “indifference”. He compares the whole thing to childbirth, which in principle cannot be pleasant, and adds that the performance is an “autonomous creation” with its own requirements, which he, the actors and the technical team figure out in a joint process.

He emphasized that “the performance was not interrupted because of arguments, but because I was enforcing the execution of what was supposed to be done”. During the first meeting with the acoustician, he told him that he expected him to be a partner in the sound production, “to be the creator of energy” and to follow the actors. In response, he was to hear: “I’m not an artist, I’m a performer.” He adds that he sensed a contempt for the word “artist” and an aversion “to everything I propose”. This is how Krystian Lupa explains his approach to the technical team:

But I already know that it won’t be the air the actor breathes. It’s not going to be that soundscape that gives life to the characters. It’s going to be a dead space, made of ascents, ascensions, stored timing, things done by the computer. So at least it has to be done precisely. I stop, I say stop, stop, one more time, we have to do it again. Getting the job done turns out to be violence.

The director recalls that he worked with the feeling that he was still “halfway” and no one from the technical team wanted to “push the release together”. The director stresses that due to technical shortcomings, the work on assembling the structure took “twice as long” as in all his other productions.

This is how he interprets the differences in approach to work: “An artist has no right to expect creative involvement or even precise performance from a co-worker, because this is violence, because he has different standards, he is used to the fact that the sound engineer is only allowed to play music of a certain level to a given ending not from being involved with the actor and the processes and the energy on stage. And the director is supposed to tell him when to press a key. Period. Those are his standards of work.” For Lupa, this is unacceptable, because in this way “everything” created by the actors is “killed” and will lead to the production becoming “a corpse, just like a series of other corpses roaming the stages of the world”.

Lupa resembles Szczepkowska’s action. “Very sad, downright scary”

During the conversation with Ewa Kaleta, the situation that occurred during the premiere of the play “Persona. Simone’s body” was recalled. Actress Joanna Szczepkowska then showed the audience her bare buttocks and did not hide that she did not agree with how Krystian Lupa works. The director recalls that her recent rehearsals for the play moved him very much, because she found her character, but he called her behavior during the performance “a preplanned happening” and denied that her behavior was a spontaneous reaction to the final rehearsals.

“The director of the Dramatic Theater warned me two weeks before the premiere that he had received a message that Joasia was inviting everyone to a performance where she would do her happening. Apparently, she thought it was a better idea for her than a role alongside Małgosia Braunek. For the sake of this idea, she had to throw out everything she did in the role, all the sacrifice of her heroine, Simone Weil. It was very sad, even scary for me, “he told Ewa Kaleta.

Joanna Szczepkowska, who had already expressed solidarity with the Swiss team, responded to Krystian Lupa’s statement. She emphasizes that the words spoken about her in an interview for “Election” are “a complete and incomprehensible lie”. “Well, two weeks before the premiere, I had no such or similar idea – director Paweł Miśkiewicz would have to be a clairvoyant who could read minds that had not yet been created. So he could not inform the director of anything like that,” the actress writes on her Facebook profile. She adds that she only invited her daughter to the premiere, and a couple of her friends were also present. After the performance, they met in the dressing room, where they were surprised to learn that Szczepkowska’s behavior was an improvisation and not a part of the performance planned by Lupa:

This lie is incomprehensible. My ‘performers’ was controversial enough that the director doesn’t need to resort to fabrication to criticize it.

Teatr Powszechny about Lupa: We do not agree to any forms of violence

The Powszechny Theater in Warsaw has in its repertoire two performances directed by Krystian Lupa – “Capri – the island of fugitives” and “Imagine”. The management of the institution decided that it had to take part in the discussion, because the events in Geneva had started an important dialogue. “It is difficult for us to assess the situations that took place while working on the performance in Geneva, because we know them mainly from media reports and we were not a party to them. However, we would like to emphasize that we do not consent to any forms of violence, violations of workers’ rights and good manners,” he says

The management of the facility admits that it has faced various crisis situations many times while working on various performances, including Krystian Lupa’s. “We are of the opinion that it is the theater management’s duty to react within certain procedures, to mediate, explain such situations, repair wrongs and introduce security solutions for the future. This was also the case with this production” – assure the managers.

Teatr Powszechny recalls that after the events surrounding the performance “Klątwa” in 2017, it began to implement various transparent procedures to “secure various creative work processes” – these were consulted with the theater team. As a result, solutions such as “anti-mobbing and anti-discrimination policy, the function of the employee’s trust wife, numerous anti-discrimination workshops and contracts on the principles of cooperation signed during the first rehearsal of the performance” appeared.

In addition, there are three trade unions operating in the facility, which intervene on an ongoing basis if necessary. “We are pleased to see the changes that are taking place in the methods of work and communication. The necessity of these changes was also the subject of our conversations with Krystian Lupa and Piotr Skiba before starting cooperation on ‘Imagine’ in 2021” – adds the management. There was also an announcement:

Each subsequent performance by Krystian Lupa is a creative process involving many people from all departments working in the theatre. It is not only an original work, but after the premiere it becomes the collective property of the cast, theater employees and, above all, the viewers who want to see it.

In the coming days, we will play shows of the performance ‘Capri – the island of fugitives’ planned well in advance. We are currently working on a relaunch and hope we won’t disappoint our audience.

Krystian Lupa is one of the most respected Polish theater directors in the world. In recent years, he has produced such performances as the already mentioned “The Trial”, “Capri – the island of fugitives” and “Imagine”. Lupa teaches classes at the Krakow AST, so he has a considerable influence on the work of subsequent generations of directors. His performances are often staged on the most important stages around the world.