University of Utrecht and Huis aan de Werf present:

A conversation with Ludmila Ryba about the theatre of Tadeusz Kantor

Tadeusz Kantor (1915-1990) was one of the twentieth century’s most innovative visual artists, stage directors, and theoreticians. The breadth and diversity of his artistic endeavors align him with such diverse artists as, for example, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy), Marcel Duchamp, Vsevelod Meyerhold, Oscar Schlemmer, Antonin Artaud, Jackson Pollock, Jerzy Grotowski, Christo, Allan Kaprow, Peter Brook, or Robert Wilson. His work with the Cricot 2 company and his theatre manifestos challenged the extant conventions of creating art in post-World War II culture and expanded the boundaries of traditional and nontraditional (Dada, Surrealist, Constructivist, Happening) theatre forms. Kantor’s most widely known productions, The Dead Class (1975), Wielopole, Wielopole (1980), Let the Artists Die (1985), I Shall Never Return (1988), and Today is my Birthday (1990) have had a profound impact on artists in Europe, North America, and Latin America who even today almost 20 years after his death continue to engage with his radical theatre.

Ludmila Ryba was a member of Kantor’s theatre company Cricot 2.  She joined the company in 1979 and stayed in it until 1992, performing in Wielopole, Wielopole, The Machine of Love and Death, I Shall Never Return, Today is my Birthday. She was also Kantor’s translator and assisted him during his workshops in Milan (1986) and in Avignon (1990). Since 1994, she works mostly in France with “Compagnie du Singulier” created by Marie Vayssière, also a former Cricot 2 actress.

Michal Kobialka has been writing about Kantor’s theatre and translating Kantor’s theoretical writings for over 20 years. He is the author of A Journey Through Other Spaces: Essays and Manifestos, 1944-1990 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), and over 35 articles which appeared in American and European theatre journals. He has just finished a critical book-length study of Tadeusz Kantor’s theatre, Further on Nothing: Tadeusz Kantor’s Theatre, which will be published by University of Minnesota Press in 2009.

A conversation with Ludmila Ryba about the theatre of Tadeusz Kantor is an attempt to critically engage with Kantor’s treatment of actor, space, and object in his theatre. Using The Dead Class and I Shall Never Return, which will be screened, Ms. Ryba will discuss these seminal concepts and ideas for Kantor and how they were materialized on stage. Having worked with Kantor, and having shared her insights about Kantor’s practice with students and theatre practitioners in France, Italy, and the United States in the form of workshops, Ms. Ryba offers a unique combination of a practical and theoretical understanding of Kantor’s theatre practice.