The Art We Need
- Participants ― Wojciech Retz, a member of Na Górze band and Jan Rosołowski
The point of departure will be the term needful theatre. This is the name given by the ensemble of Theatre Węgajty to their work started in 2008 in the nursing home in the village of Jonkowo. It resulted in five performances directed by Wacław Sobaszek (the premiere of another is scheduled for this autumn). Needful theatre will serve only as a catalyst, however. With the presence of Wojtek Retz – musician from the band Na Górze from Rzadkowo and Jan Rosołowski – photographer, the author of the album Krzyk istnienia (Cry of Existence), the subject will be broadened to the field of needful art.
Creating art with people living in nursery homes is a work with people whose situation is extreme; with the cast out from ordinary life, who are at the mercy of the institution controlling their most intimate needs, on the one hand, and on the other hand also on the society which follows completely different rules outside of the walls of the nursing home. The breakfast will ponder the question: what is it that makes the artists peek on the other side and start to work there?
It will involve stories about processes, often complicated and graduate, of stepping over the threshold of the nursing home by artists, about getting to know such places while learning something about oneself in the new situation as well; about the methods applied and the search for solutions when one is faced with inhibitions and inabilities. The artists will speak about personalities and faith of those who have accompanied them. They will reveal what the texts and images, which they discovered or created working together, have become for them. They will reflect on whether the experience of living in nursery homes could/should become the subject matter of art. What would be its objective? If the experience of artistic work in a place like this by definition goes beyond aesthetics, it changes the individuals involved in its creation in many aspects, affecting both their perspective on life as well as on art. What is needful theatre or needful art and can they change anything in the today’s social sphere?
