“It’s Polish theatre, what do you expect?”
Words spoken by a teary eyed man as Teatr Biuro Podróży’s haunting new production Silence came to an end at the Winchester Bus Station on Friday, 9.30pm. The Polish theatre company are widely acclaimed for their grittily exposing and complex street performances involving stilts, pyrotechnics and moving vehicles. Their show Carmen Funebre which premiered in 1994 won the Fringe First, Critic Award and Hamada Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for its harrowing display of nationalism, persecution and the diaspora of life as a refugee, inspired by Yugoslavian refugee’s real experiences.
The Bus Station was a tactical choice of venue as their set’s main feature was a metal frame bus that characters entered, climbed upon and that was set alight by masked men on stilts, dressed in leather they carried flaming wheels that terrorised the city’s inhabitants in faceless, nameless terror.
The sight of Winchester’s King Alfred service driving past the stage on their daily, undisturbed route questioned the distance to which we place issues of terror from ourselves, especially those abroad. Above the bus stood the brightly lit words ‘THIS CITY HAS TEN MILLION SOULS’ which served as a poignant reminder of the sheer number of those facing persecution and fear from extremism around the world.
Silence could justly be called immersive theatre as the audience, all close to the flames, smoke and movement were forced to use their senses of smell and touch which was incredibly impactful; one man I spoke to said the heat of the flames alone made him weep as it brought thoughts of the Grenfell Tower fire to mind. Towards the show’s end two motorcyclist thugs who were a feature throughout brought several metal poles to the city, standing upright they seemed harmless to the people and they showed relief as the men drove away without torturing them as they had before. The tubes erupted with chocking yellow clouds of gas that left the city in a delirious panic. As the dust faded they all lay still. This daring display communicated the horror of chemical weaponry as a deceptive and unsuspecting killer.
At no point did Teatr Biuro Podróży’s work feel uneducated or made simply to shock, something that can so tragically happen with theatre made about suffering. Silence had something to say about things that have been seen, heard and felt by people the company have worked with and that is what gave the piece such sorrowful honesty.
A purple cloaked figure on stilts wearing a mask with a melancholic, disturbing expression featured throughout the performance; he came to watch and to heal, reviving the gas chocked people from their death beds. His role was interpretable; perhaps he represented a god or heroic person, but for me he appeared to be the country, the earth, the place itself embodied, gazing upon the horror of human action, a disembodied perception that the audience were encouraged to empathise with.
The show ended with a tragic metaphor for the fate of many who flee the issues the cast articulated in the piece; using only paper boats the audience instantly understood that each represented hundreds of crowded, crushed people desperate for a new start, to be free. A man then entered dressed in a high visibility jacket carrying a hose pipe. With a jet of water the little boats were pulp, the hose dropped the ground and the show ended. It was an abrupt, gut churning image that questioned the compassion felt for those who are lost and adrift; are they simply a mess to clean up to some, unwanted and uncared for?
Silence was a truly harrowing and thought provoking piece of work that challenged the viewer; perceptive, compassionate and beautiful, it will stay with me for years to come.
