Focus On: Dzieci Experimental Theatre Ensemble

Dzieci (djyeh-chee) is an international experimental theatre ensemble dedicated to a search for the "sacred" through the medium of theatre. Using techniques garnered from such theatre masters as Jerzy Grotowski, Eugenio Barba and Peter Brook, ritual forms derived from Native American and Eastern spiritual disciplines, and an ethic based securely in Humanistic Psychology, Dzieci aims to create a theatre which is equally engaged with personal transformation as with public presentation.

Towards this aim, the ensemble balances work on performance with work of service, through creative and therapeutic interactions in hospitals and other institutional settings. Dzieci believes helping others generates a profound healing effect that not only serves the patient but also strengthens the ensemble's work. The hymns, chants, and folk tunes Dzieci sings in performance are coated by the experience of singing those same songs at the bedsides of the sick and dying, with children in psychiatric hospitals, and for wide variety of disadvantaged populations.

Dzieci is firmly dedicated to process. Theatrical creations come organically over a long period of time and remain in repertory as ceremonial events. Their signature piece, Fools Mass, now enjoying its tenth anniversary, has been presented as a rite of worship at a number of religious and spiritual gatherings including the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Barcelona in 2003.

The current edition of The Encyclopedia of Religion, has this to say about Dzieci’s Fools Mass:

The performers wear the vestments, not of priests but of medieval bedlam idiots who are called upon by circumstance to celebrate a Mass even though they do not know how. Moving easily between the sublime and the ridiculous, drawing its audience through laughter toward participation and contemplation, the work resists being categorized as either theater or religion, becoming both at once in an event experienced by many as transformative. As they stand beside these grotesque characters in prayer, worshipers begin to participate in the liturgy with new understanding.

Besides Fools Mass, Dzieci has one other production in its current repertoire, a chamber version of Macbeth, titled, Makbet. For this work, the ensemble has learned all of the lines, of every part, through a process of oral transmission so as to create maximum improvisational possibilities. In performance, they do not know who will be playing any given role at any given time. As presented by a traveling family of Gypsies, the piece creates the impression of a ritual or ceremony. A very dark ceremony. Employing haunting folk songs and chants from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe along with the poetry of Shakespeare’s verse, Dzieci explores (and explodes), the very essence of theatre and storytelling.

For more information on Dzieci, please visit: DzieciTheatre.org

Note: Dzieci is Polish for "Children"

---

2009