The LA M.ORT theatre originated during my second year at the Academy. We started as a group of dormitory roommates, each one of different academic background, working together on the spectacle Samotność (Solitude). I had been looking for a way to make the spectators not only hear about loneliness, but also feel it themselves. And so we decided to perform for the audience of only fifteen people, ushered to the room individually, as if queuing, and then seated at quite a distance, in separate corners, so that they would watch each other as if from far away. The group's name was also a conscious choice, not only to pay our tribute to Tadeusz Kantor, but also to indicate that we do theatre deprived of all unnecessary means of expression, excess and splendor; that we are almost black-and-grey, rather than black-and-white.
Since the very beginning our focus was on the Spectator. We share the firm belief that without audience there can be no theatre. A cliche? Maybe, yet hardly obvious in contemporary art. I have been always interested in the Man, with all the psychological and moral complexity. I always start from the two: a need to explore a topic, a problem of some sort, and the question of the spectators, their place in the theatrical performance - an attempt at understanding their dynamics in order to reach them most effectively. Such was the train of thought that lead to "Wszystko zamiast" (All Instead): a performance played entirely for but one Spectator. The script - the "scaffolding" of the act - is always the same, but it is the spectator who decides to develop it, engage in a discussion, start acting, or leave it be. We give him or her every right to do so - but never force.
Our next project was "Krzyk" (Scream), based on Camus's Caligula, then Antygona (Antigone) and Furia (Fury), inspired by Rushdie and finally "Rosencrantz i Guildenstern nie żyją" (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead). The tale of fear, time and entanglement in time, of dying deprived of all dignity, of asking questions and seeking answers. "Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it first occurred to you that you don't go on forever. Must have been shattering, stamped into one's memory. And yet, I can't remember it."
It's been ten years already. We played in Warsaw, Cracow, Gdansk, Edinburgh. We were present at festivals such as "The Best Off", "Kontestacje", Akcja Teatralna "Azyl". We have been awarded at Łódzkie Spotkania Teatralne three times, we have won the Third International Festival of Theatre and Arts "Zderzenia". We have a file of reviews, a few reportages recorded for "Pegaz" and "Łossskot". We have become protagonists of a master's thesis. And, most importantly, despite the difficult times we're still standing.
Currently we are working on HamletMachine. The text is challenging. Heiner MUller once wrote that the tragedy of our times lies in the fact that we still are able to find ourselves in Shakespearean plays. Muller's own work is similar. Hamlet himself is but a lockpick, a key to challenge one's own soul. The circumstances might have changed; the world has long moved beyond the Cold War paranoia, but still... The military junta of 1981 managed to drive tanks all over my childhood. Where is Europe heading, and why are we prophesizing its end? Oriana Fallaci wrote of the civilization of fear. The world that we live in - we, still young - is by no means better.
Ewelina Kaufmann, LA M.ORT Theatre