Andrzej Wajda - A lesson in directing from Łomnicki (195/222)

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Polish film director Andrzej Wajda (1926-2016), whose début films portrayed the horror of the German occupation of Poland, won awards at Cannes which established his reputation as storyteller and commentator on Polish history. He also served on the national Senate from 1989-91. [Listener: Jacek Petrycki]

TRANSCRIPT: Tadeusz Łomnicki suggested that I do the play called 'Play Strindberg' in The Contemporary Theatre which was the theatre where he was working. It was a play by Durrenmatt; he'd rewritten Strindberg's 'Dance of Death' as a play for three people. I have to say that for the first time I began to think that theatre which imitates life, imitates film isn't quite the thing, and that my failure with 'Hamlet' and the staging at The Athenaeum Theatre isn't... that that's how it has to be, that I need to look for a different path and that I can't be a film director who pretends that he doesn't know about the existence of theatre which has its own set of rules. It has its conventions which in this kind of play can be divided between two people, but you can't not measure up to this convention if you want to carry on being a theatre director. I designed the sets and the costumes for this play because for the first time, I was beginning to feel that I didn't know how to direct it. 'Play Strindberg' was an adaptation of Strindberg but done in such a way as to convey Strindberg's naturalism and to impose a certain very clear theatrical form on those who would be putting on this play, a future director. I was in the auditorium and the first week was torture for me because I could see that I was incapable of finding a way of approaching these actors, and I had no idea of what I was doing there. That's when I had a unique experience. As I said, Tadeusz Łomnicki taught me how to director actors when I worked with him on my fist film 'A Generation'. Here, he was playing the lead role, the role of the captain, and suddenly one morning I was sitting in the auditorium. Andrzej Łapicki was acting alongside him, I knew him well, he'd been in earlier performances, no - I hadn't met him yet then, no, I had met him working on a film, yes. There was a third role, for a woman, and suddenly, I took a closer look and thought, what's going on on that stage? I could hear them talking but in a language I didn't know. They had decided that they would speak Swedish because Strindberg had written in Swedish, and so they were making sounds as if they were speaking Swedish and since they were talking to me in a language I couldn't understand I began to pay close attention to them and realised they were creating some sort of theatrical convention which was very clear. I suddenly began to regard them with great interest whereas until then, nothing in that play had really interested me. I think this was the second good lesson in directing that I had received from Łomnicki. I understood that I need to find a convention that will allow 'Play Strindberg' to take on a theatrical dimension and not just to imitate life. So gradually, scene by scene, we were able to make this happen. This was my first step in the direction of theatre, not imitation, but theatre.