We sit down with Filip Rudnicki, director of the spectacle “The Plague”, to talk about the latest premiere at the KTO Theatre, the Brothers Grimm, and the manipulative power of social media.
Do you think that in the 21st century, art can still wake us from our lethargy, or is it merely a mirror in which we can reflect ourselves?
I don’t really believe in the cathartic role of art – that a single screening or reading will change our lives. On the other hand, engaging with art definitely sensitizes us; it sharpens our awareness of injustice and develops empathy. Armed with these kinds of superpowers, it becomes much easier for us to resist the charm pouring from the magic flute.
The magic flute appears in “The Plague” – your theatrical debut – but it is hatred, directed toward an imagined enemy, that plays “first fiddle” there, regardless of whether that enemy is symbolized by rats, minorities, or immigrants. It all sounds very pessimistic…
It is hard to muster any particular optimism when modern concentration camps are emerging in Israel, and the President of the United States speaks of immigrants not as human beings, but as animals. Art doesn’t have to be optimistic – it has to be true and draw attention to what matters. Even if it is hidden under the guise of a fairy tale about a magic flute. But please don’t worry, in all this chaos of the world of “The Plague,” there is also a ray of hope, and it is, of course, brought by love.
That ray of hope is exactly what we’re looking for. At what point during your work on the concept of the spectacle did the idea crystallize that the legend of “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” serves as the perfect template for creating a parable about today’s world?
I remember this story from my childhood. A mysterious wanderer who, by playing his magic flute, rids a town of a plague of rats. When he doesn’t receive his promised payment, he decides to seek revenge. So, he leads all the children out of the town, and they vanish without a trace. There was something intriguing about the fairy tale, something much deeper than a simple moral like: “keep your word, or you’ll be punished.” When I returned to it, it immediately struck me that this is, at its core, a story about a pact with the devil, right out of Faust. Mephistopheles has always been a grateful figure, one you can dress up in the clothes of politicians, demagogues, and agitators of all kinds. And from there, it’s just a short step to a tale about the plague of modern “brown” populism. Because that is essentially what “The Plague” is to me. I wonder what the Brothers Grimm would say to that…
The Brothers Grimm might not believe that this story would be told through dance. Why did you decide that physicality, rather than dialogue, was the best tool to talk about manipulation?
Dance, movement, form, pantomime, music – this is a universal language, understood across all latitudes. Words have power, but in my view, they mean only what they mean. In contrast, a message expressed non-verbally will have as many meanings as there are audience members watching the spectacle. Opening up these different interpretive paths is what attracts me most to the theater. I come from the film world, where the viewer’s attention is very precisely controlled, usually through editing or framing. In theater, the audience has more freedom; they “edit” the story themselves in real time. It’s actually an interesting paradox – “The Plague” is a story about manipulation that formally shies away from manipulating.
But we (as the audience) are supposed to believe in the theater, to let ourselves be seduced by the Piper. Only, is that even possible in a world of social media, where we are already hyper-alert to disinformation, clickbait, or fake news?
We might be alert, but we certainly aren’t immune. Time and again, we find out how social media directs our attention, how we are fed content that seems trivial on the surface but is actually loaded with marketing or political agendas. It is hard to distinguish what is fact from what is opinion. Can we even talk about facts anymore? Or has everything already become ideologized?
Is modern man truly so exhausted by constant uncertainty and the endless rat race that he welcomes a dictatorship with relief – on the condition that it is labeled “protection”?
History shows that all dictatorships have come to power with beautiful slogans on their banners. Whether it was “moral renewal,” “people’s power,” or “the restoration of dignity and pride,” it always ended the same way – with total authoritarian control. So, this is not a product of modern times, but rather some timeless weakness of ours for a strong state that will take upon itself the ugly duties of “the final solution to the rat question.”
Speaking of weaknesses, what was the greatest production challenge in ensuring that you wouldn’t overwhelm the audience with a story about a plague, but instead provoke them into deep reflection?
Indeed, it was quite a challenge to balance the tone of the story in such a way that, on one hand, we speak about a dangerous phenomenon, but on the other, we soften that dread a bit and avoid excessive pathos. Good old grotesque came to the rescue. That is why “The Plague” is dense with surprising collisions of the sacred and the profane, comedy and tragedy, high art and fairground spectacle. I hope this will produce an effect similar to how we perceive old newsreels today – on the surface, we laugh at the pushy propaganda, but we know full well that an oppressive system stood behind it.
Full of surprising collisions… What were the first rehearsals for the show like, when you tried to translate the idea of “surrendering autonomy” into dance – which is, after all, normally associated with freedom?
My first staging idea, which was born long before the script was even written, was to use dance within a shrinking space. These scenes became the leitmotif of “The Plague”. Each time, the dancers try to recreate the original choreography on an increasingly cramped stage, but their movements are constricted, the choreography falls apart, turning into a dramatic struggle. In the context of a story about totalitarian power, these techniques gain a deeper subtext, and Karol Miękina translated this idea into the language of dance beautifully.
Through what means do you create a study of crowd psychology, so that the audience realizes that the process of surrendering autonomy is happening here and now, outside the walls of the theater?
I actually tend to distance myself from psychology. What matters to me are the cultural, social, and, above all, political contexts. A crucial point of reference when writing the script were the texts of Carl Schmitt, a political philosopher who aligned himself with Nazism in the 1930s. He argued that the fundamental principle of politics is establishing the friend-enemy distinction. Whoever defines the enemy defines the community and holds control over it. Unfortunately, this mechanism remains relevant today, and many politicians seem to read Schmitt’s texts as bedtime stories. And that is deeply disturbing, because it makes it hard to predict who tomorrow will become the rats we’re told must be driven out of the city.
The spectacle “The Plague” was created as part of the Spaces of Art – Dance (Przestrzenie Sztuki – Taniec) program. In what way did this shape and determine the directorial process?
When telling a story through physical expression in the broadest sense, you cannot plan everything out on a piece of paper. It is a living process. For a while, I had to forget everything I had learned about working with actors. Many of the concepts I brought to the table ended up in the trash once we processed them with the dancers. Because of that, the pool of ideas had to be much richer. Naturally, the close collaboration with the choreographer, Karol Miękina, was key. I believe our endless discussions and the collision of the two different worlds we come from will yield a completely new quality.
You can read more about the spectacle “The Plague” here >>> KLIK.
