The Archa Theatre and French Institute present the performance of Wladyslaw Znorko and his group Cosmos Kolej
Ullysse a l'envers (Odysseus Inside Out)
April 13 and 14, 1995
Script, set design and direction: Wladyslaw Znorko
Performing: Antonella Amirante, Shannon Finnegan, Leslaw a Waclaw Janicki, Mary Jordan, Elisabateh Legillon, Richard Martin, Bruno la Brasca, Irina Vavilova and Philippe Vincenot
Sound Design: Bernard Vallery, Henri Lamboulay
Light Design: Richard Psourtseff
Costumes: Guylaine Péricat
Stage Manager: Laurent Plancher, Albert Lesueur
Administration and communication: Philippe Puigserver
This performance was created with the support AFAA and the Ministry of Culture, Czech Republic.
The performance, "Odysseus Inside Out", is the latest production of director Wladyslaw Znorko and his group Cosmos Kolej. On Wladyslaw Znorko's ship, the French, Irish, Russian, Italian and Polish actors float (as well as the two known faces from Kantor's productions - Leslaw and Waclaw Janici), those who have together created a theatrical fairy tale of singular beauty. Music and pictures are mixed together on the stage - they penetrate and bring up a mirage of fleeting and pertinacious dreams that are mysteriously found in that time just before one wakes up. There is no need to speak the same language, only to find or create a universal theatrical language which will allow the spectators to sail with the Cosmos Kolej's crew to Blasket's islands…
"After, those journeys that I have behind me with the books of the loving authors - Maurice Ponse, Bruno Schulz, Jaroslav Hašek - the time has came to climb to the peak of those admirable theatrical buildings which I have built in the countryside. And to bind the debris, driftwood and ashes together which came about as the result of ten seasons of hunting on the wild sea in the hunts of remembering.
"That is laws of the ebb and flow. Today, I return to the start of my work, somewhat similar to the nib of the Celtic illuminators. Several years ago, when our group went on tour to Ireland, Galfway, a man who owned a second hand bookshop on High Street, predicted:
- Once, you will return to the Blasket Islands.
- But, I answered, I have never been there before!
- At one time, you had to leave there from the constraint….
For a long time, I made fun from this mysterious prediction - as if it were from some Chinese proverb, that you chew about inside your mouth...
It is peculiar that the Big Island of Blasket keeps a record of the number of writers for every metre settled territory. Actually, in the first ten years of our century, there were more than four writers for every one hundred inhabitants. I end that they were spontaneous writers who, in their rare books, subscribed to the hardship of the islanders who were filled with a disquieted premonition. Without their testimony, there would be nothing left after a compulsory evacuation of island in 1953.
Here on the islands of our suburbs, life is more difficult - I long to understand it.
To return to the Blasket Island and to write there, is the way how to admit the unsteadiness of the life of man and to accept its rough beauty.
Wladyslaw Znorko