The lights are on, the curtain has already fallen, but the audience won’t leave. Spectators keep applauding and won’t stop unless the artists reappear on stage for what later seems to be an endless series of curtain calls – such exaltation ensued after the first performance of “Bandanders” in the Teatr Wielki (Polish National Opera) in Warsaw last September. This short, but surprisingly original play was prepared by two Theatre Academy graduates in the Białystok Puppet Theatre, which reunites some of Poland’s most skillful puppeteers and specializes in different forms of visual theatre, object theatre, mask theatre and drama theatre.

One of the most stunning aspects of “Baldanders” lies in the simplicity of execution. The project was wholly conceived by two artists: the 29-year-old Marcin Bartnikowski, responsible for the play and the five-year younger Marcin Bikowski, who manufactured the grotesque puppets, dolls and manikins. Both of them incorporate the many characters and their alter egos from the script. In comparison with their previous project entitled “Głupcy” (“The Fools”), “Banldanders”, according to many critics, stands as a great improvement. The number of elements included in the set has been reduced and instead more stress was put on movement and action. Such a solution renders the attention of spectators much more acute. As a dramatic work that is primarily intended for small audiences, “Baldanders” has an immediate effect on people. This may be also due to its use of meta-reference techniques. Once we are engulfed in the darkness, we realize that we are watching a show within a show, with two characters addressing us directly, and we end up surrendering to the idea of “having broken the fourth wall” only to fuse with the imaginary world.

The spectacle provides a reflection on humanity in the context of our multiple identities and their transience. This is presented in a series of disturbing dialogues and monologues carried in a sideshow by a double-headed jailor (Marcin Bartnikowski), his captured freak and the creature’s many incarnations. The eponymous demon, inspired from Jorge Luis Borges’ The Book of Imaginary Beings constantly remains in a cage, but this doesn’t seem to restrain him from using his supernatural powers, for Baldanders can posses the body of anyone he wishes. The phantasmagorical transformations of Marcin Bikowski, who plays this role, emphasize the central theme of this endeavor. The actor has to perform a vast range of acrobatics in order to incorporate – sometimes simultaneously - the ominous fiend, a female dancer, a stranger whose body is incomplete and to animate a row of silicon heads. If it weren’t enough, Bikowski, when personifying these schizophrenic avatars, manages to alternate between voices so dexterously that a distorted mask bundled in a jagged cloth appears to be really conversing with others of its kin. Music by Anna Świętochowska together with scarce lighting is another component which sets the right mood and hypnotizes the public. The brooding atmosphere is now and then interrupted by jocular comments of a worm Glist, which keeps crawling out of Bladanders’ pocket to mock his words and which stands here as a metaphor for death. Although the main idea is grim and confusing, the cynical utterances and absurd relationships between the crippled characters paradoxically help to relieve the haunting esthetics of the play and frequently result in hysterical laughs among the audience.

The text of Bartnikowski’s play is very ambiguous: a sociologist will find here a discourse on social roles, a psychiatrist a profound study of psychiatric disorders, whilst others will see it as collection of dark truths about ourselves. The ending lines tell us: “No one is ever himself for more than a split second”.

Critics hailed “Bandanders” as ingenious and sensational and it didn’t take long after its premiere in Fall 2006 that it started winning prizes at various festivals, most notably the 20th edition of International Theatre Festival “Walizka” in Łomża. “Baldanders” is something new on polish stages. Surreal, inventive and thoroughly entertaining, it will surely appeal to aficionados of such writers as Edgar Allan Poe, Roland Topor, Charles Baudelaire or Thomas Ligotti. The increasingly popular duo after a warm reception in Moscow in November this year, is now preparing a tour through Russia. Hopefully, one day we will be able to see their masterpiece in other parts of Europe.

Labels: Theater