The following is taken from
the programme notes 1994
It is 1949. Bruno Schulz, writer, schoolteacher,
and "useful Jew" is made to work for the Nazis in occupied Poland. He
is sorting banned books for destruction. From their pages rise vivid
images from his past.
He revisits the magical world of his father's shop - his father in
fact a provincial tailor, for Bruno "that fencing master of imagination" waging
war against empty days. Father is eternally preoccupied with the mystery
of creation, the life that lies sleeping in the weave of a cloth, and
with the rare birds he has hatched out in the attic of the house. Whether
in the house or under sleepy August skies, father sows confusion and
laughter in equal measure.
Adela, the servant-girl is his arch-enemy.
"One day Adela suddenly appeared in Father's bird kingdom and with
the help of a long broom, she danced the dance of destruction". Father
disappears and Bruno is unable to recall him.
He searches for him in the sanatorium. He finds him for a brief moment.
He disappears again. Perhaps he has died. Bruno refuses to believe it.
He insists that his mother keep the family business going exactly as
before, but nothing is as before. The old world of his father is disappearing,
the new world is lurching out of control - like the creations of Bruno's
imagination.
"There, in those charred, many raftered forests of attics, darkness
began to degenerate and ferment wildly... Night came... The wind intensified
in force and violence..."
ACT 1
ACT OF REMEMBRANCE
THE SUMMONING OF THE PAST
"Somewhere in the dawn of childhood was The Book; the wind
would rustle through its pages and the pictures would rise.
Page after page floated in the air and gently saturated the
landscape with brightness." (The Book)
THE AWAKENING OF MEMORY A SPRING DUSK
"Who can understand the great and sad machinery of spring? Tree
roots want to speak, freshly starched underskirts rustle on park
benches, and stories are rejuvenated and start their plots again." (Spring)
ACT 2
THE AGE OF GENIUS
THE CLASS
"Dear and respected friend, School today is not the school of an earlier day ... teaching a
likeable gang of twenty-six boys equipped with hammers, saws and
planes, is an honourable struggle, and the violent and desperate
measures of intimidation I must resort to in order to keep them
in check fill me with disgust..."
Extract from a letter from Bruno Schulz to Waclaw Czarski,
chief editor of Tygodnik Illustrowany (Polish Illustrated Weekly).
Winter 1934/35
THE TEACHER
"I am very much worn out by school - I now teach in grade school -
I wish I could get on without a position and live for my writing alone."
Letter
to Romana Halpern Drohobycz, 1936
CHILDREN'S GAMES
"There is no dead matter. Lifelessness, Emil, is only a disguise behind
which lie unknown forms of life. Wood is alive."
(Tailor's Dummies)
THE SHOP OF CHILDHOOD MEMORY
"At noon, the shop experienced a momentary pause and relaxation: the
hour of the afternoon siesta ... the shop assistants abandoned themselves
for a moment to the delights of yawning and turned somersaults on the
bales of cloth." (The Dead Season)
"Childhood ... oh that invasion of brightness, that blissful spring,
oh, Father..." (The Book)
FATHER'S BEAUTIFUL SHOP
It was the age of electricity and mechanics and a "hole swarm of
inventions was showered on the world by the resourcefulness of human
genius ... in every house electric bells were installed." (The Comet)
THE CALAPHONY FROM MALABAR
An electric bell is an ordinary mystification. The fabric of life
can be found within the weave of a cloth." (The Comet).
My father, that incorrigible improviser, that fencing master of the
imagination, led colourful and splendid punter-offensives of fantasy
against the boredom that strangled the city." (Tailor's Dummies).
FAMILY DINNER
The days passed, the afternoons grew longer: there was nothing to
do in them. A yellow monotony, an elemental boredom. We were inclined
to underrate the value of Father's sovereign magic, which saved us
from the lethargy of empty days and nights." (Tailor's Dummies).
AUGUST
"The untidy, feminine ripeness of August had expanded into enormous,
impenetrable clumps of burdocks... with their luxuriant tongues
of fleshy greenery ...a tangled thicket of grasses, weeds and thistles
crackled in the fire of the afternoon. The sleeping garden was resonant
with flies." (August)
"My father, exhausted by the heat... shook himself violently, buzzed,
and rose in fright before our eyes, transformed into a monstrous,
hairy, steel-blue horsefly ... we recognised that my father's
transformation was a symbol of an inner protest, a violent and desperate
demonstration of suffering." (The Dead Season)
THE BIRDS
"One day, during spring cleaning, Adela suddenly appeared in Father's
bird kingdom... A fiendish cloud of feathers and wings arose screaming,
and Adela, like a furious maenad protected by the whirlwind of her
thyrsus, danced the dance of destruction...
A moment later, my father came downstairs - a broken man, an exiled
king who had lost his throne and his kingdom." (Birds)
THE CLASS
"Adela's complexion, under the influence of the springward gravitation
of the moon, became younger, acquired milky reflexes, opaline shades
and the glaze of enamel. She now had the whip hand..." (The Comet)
TANGO
"Lifting up with ease Adela's slim shoe, he spoke as if seduced
by the lustrous eloquence of that empty shell of patent leather.
'Do you understand the horrible cynicism of this symbol on a woman's
foot, the provocation of her licentious walk on such elaborate heels?'..." (The
Age of Genius)
ACT 3
THE REPUBLIC OF DREAMS
THE BRANCH LINE OF TIME
"The train, which ran only once a week on that forgotten branch
line, carried no more than a few passengers. Never before had I
seen such archaic coaches ... they exuded an air of strange and
frightening neglect ...Conductor where are you?" (Sanatorium under the Sign
of the Hourglass)
THE SANATORIUM
"In the hallway of the many windowed hotel that advertised itself
as the Sanatorium, there was semi-darkness and a solemn silence.
Dr Gotard was standing in the middle of the room to receive me.
'None of our patients knows or can guess that the whole secret of
the operation is that we have put back the dock. Here your father's
death, the death that has already struck him in your country, has
not occurred yet'..." (Sanatorium
under the Sign of the Hourglass)
FATHER'S DEMISE
"My father was slowly failing, wilting before our eyes. Hunched
among the enormous pillows, his grey hair standing wildly on end
he talked to himself in undertones. It seemed as if his personality
had split into a number of opposing and quarrelling selves; he argued
loudly with himself, persuading forcibly and passionately, pleading
and begging." (Visitation)
THE ERLKÖNIG - MOTHER'S STORY
"At the age of 8, Bruno's mother read to him Goethe's 'Erlkönig',
of which he said later: 'Through half-understood German, I felt
its sense and was shattered and wept deeply'." - Notes to the company from Jacob Schulz, Bruno's nephew, June '92
"My mother rushed in, frightened and enfolded my screams with her
arms, wanting to stifle them like flames and choke them in the warmth
of her love. She closed my mouth with hers and screamed together
with me." (The Age of Genius)
THE EMPTY SHOP
"I had a hidden resentment against my mother for the ease with
which she had recovered from Father's death. She had never loved
him, I thought..." (Cockroaches)
THE LANDAU - MOTHER'S STORY
"The image of the landau was very important to Bruno. Throughout
his childhood he drew this picture again and again..."
Notes to the company from Jacob Schulz, Bruno's nephew, June '92
"Seduced by my mother's caresses, I forgot my father, and my life
began to run along a new and different track with no holidays
and no miracles." (The Book)
AUTUMN
"Autumn is a huge touring show ... it is a time of great confusion:
everybody is pulling at the curtain ropes, and the sky, a great
autumnal sky, hangs in tatters and is filled with the screeching
of pulleys there is an atmosphere of feverish haste, of belated
carnival a ballroom about to empty in the small hours, a panic of
masked people who cannot find their real clothes." (A Second Fall)
THE GALE
"Night came. The wind intensified in force and violence. There,
in those charred, many-raftered forests of attics, darkness began
to degenerate and ferment wildly... (The Gale)
ACT 4
ACT OF DESTRUCTION
THE WORSHIPPERS OF BAAL.
"The time of the Great Season was approaching. The streets were
getting busy. At six in the evening the city became feverish, the
houses stood flushed, and people walked about made up in bright
colours, illuminated by some interior fire, their eyes shining with
a festive fever, beautiful yet evil." (The Night of the Great Season)
THE FALL OF BIRDS
"And soon the sky came out in a coloured rash, in blotches which
grew and spread, and was filled with a strange tribe of birds. They
were the distant, forgotten progeny of that generation of birds
which at one time Adela had chased away to all four points of the
sky. All of a sudden stones began to whistle through the air. The
stupid, thoughtless people had begun to throw them into the fantastic
bird filled sky." (The
Night of the Great Season)
It is 1949. Bruno Schulz, writer, schoolteacher,
and "useful Jew" is made to work for the Nazis in occupied Poland. He
is sorting banned books for destruction. From their pages rise vivid
images from his past.