Jakubowski, Jarosław

Jarosław Jakubowski’s The Funeral is a grotesque, mysterious, and irrational play. It follows the story of a person called Him, a middle-aged man, a husband of 10 years, a father who in a Kafkaesque style is baffled by the absurdity of the events around him. The play does not show the actual ceremony as it starts a few days prior. The plot of The Funeral is divided into two sets. In the living set, so “here and now”, and in the memories of the main character who comments on the actions that take place beyond this world and set in motion further scenarios. It starts with a scene where the main character meets Maria, his wife, and their first date, to later jump into the “here and now” where the once loving woman is organising her husband’s funeral. It’s thanks to her that Him meets and bids farewell to other characters. That brings him closer to his own funeral as well as explains what he did (not do) wrong. 

The visits paid by the Maestro, the tailor, and the carpenter, who arrange the suit and the coffin for Him, bring forth the realisation how much he neglected his wonderful wife. Mother and Father give their son mourning shoes, they lecture him with prayer, and note that he never met their expectations, he achieved nothing, and he wasted his years being a drunk. The meeting with Drunkard, a local tramp, a former classmate, who dealt with his wife’s death, helps Him get familiar with death but it also reveals the truth about his mischievous youth. The talk with Son is meant to explain to him the following events and to be a tearful goodbye, but it just ends with him distancing from his father. And finally, the confrontation with the Man, Maria’s lover, that emphasises Maria’s misery and ignites in Him the will to fight for the woman and gives Him hope that this tragic destiny can be defied.

And so, in the play’s finale, the couple relives their past romantic moments, like swimming naked in the lake, but to no avail as the die is cast. The feeling has faded. Everything is set and the funeral must be performed. The play ends with a memory from the place beyond about a menu of the last morning and Him’s declaration that he’s finally ready. 

The Funeral is a perfect proposition for theatres that search for great and uneasy drama in Beckett-like style. For directors who are interested in the metaphysical tragedy of the human fate. And for actors who seek real, layered characters.

A man called “Old”, after many years, comes back to his hometown from his journey to South America. Many “benevolent” people turn up, a soon as he arrives, as they suspect they could make business with “Old”. “Old” comes up with an idea of creating a museum of butterflies he brought from America. The project could change the life of theprovince, but nobody believes it could come true. The only people who care about something in the little town are“Old”, “Crazy” and the “Drunkard”- the defender of the poor. Jakubowski grasped in a wonderful way the spirit and the language of the province.  

Jakubowski’s debut play. The first, long scene is an encounter of a simple woman, tired and conscious that she had lost in her life with a ruthless journalist. He wants to exploit and make profit out of her sorrows. She had several stillbirths before she gave birth to her beloved son, Staszek. Her husband, Zygmunt was an alcoholic and he died soon after Staszek was born. Jakubowski shows the moral ambiguity of the woman who drives her son to suicide by her passionate, dangerous love. The part of the journalist is also ambiguous, he wants to sell the sensational programme at any cost. The play is particularly suitable for television It has a very challenging role for a middle aged woman.   

Among the garbage heaps, a wretched man, the Lone Man, walks. His everyday life is filled with reciting newspaper headlines found in the dump and collecting junk. Suddenly, there appears the Lone Woman, who - initially unsuccessfully - tries to pull him out of isolation. Soon, the first barrier is broken - the Lone Man offers his companion fruit and vegetables (like Beckett's Vladimir towards Estragon), although the residual interactions are far from real communication.

Jakubowski openly plays with Beckett's work, especially with Waiting for Godot and Happy Days. But Jakubowski's dump is not only a representation of a destroyed culture, language, and recycling of used up ideas. The image of the dump serves him primarily to emphasize the individual perspective of the protagonist; objects help to build a memory palace. The Lone Man remembers his grandmother through the prism of the things he uses. Phrases taken from old songs also appear as artifacts of bygone times. The author gradually reveals to the reader the details of a private drama. The Lone Man avoids contact with others, is distrustful (he cites the story of Magellan who was killed by the natives of the discovered archipelago), but this does not discourage the Lone Woman, who initiates a game of "kingdom", assuming the roles of monarchs and peasants, which reveals the close nature of the relations that once united the characters.  In the meantime, we recognize the behaviour of two ex-lovers, each wounded.

The man orders his companion to confess her betrayal. The woman tells a laconic story, trying to trivialize the affair. The man derives a perverse, masochistic pleasure from hearing about someone else's erotic life, like the protagonists of some of Bergman's films or von Trier's Breaking the Waves. Perhaps subconsciously, the protagonist of this play tries to discredit his partner, gain control over her, force her to confess her guilt. Or maybe he just wants to understand...?

The man wants to resurrect his old life, but the woman cools his enthusiasm: "You must know that nothing will be as it was before. This is the first law of the "kingdom". The woman becomes more and more confident in taking control of her companion. She changes the narrative; she starts tormenting him with colourful stories about her side-piece. Finally, she gives him hope to rebuild the kingdom and promises a crown. But it is the coronation of a donkey; in the morning the Lone Man notices the absence of his beloved - only "a pound of rags" left. Jakubowski's drama is not only a skilful juggling of literary conventions. It is also a psychological game, a power play in which the characters use various tricks - manipulation, building trust, playing on emotions. But the author also touches upon other topics - a nihilistic lack of faith in a person's moral condition, awareness of one's own mortality, looking at the "other side of an illusion", where under a healthy, resilient body there is the "kingdom of a worm". The inhabitant of the "kingdom" is a man exposed to constant mockery, trying to regain dignity and respect in the eyes of another, which still ends with his humiliation. This multi-level piece is an intriguing challenge for potential directors and a pair of actors who can find their own interpretations in it. Finally, the staging of the play creates many opportunities for stage designers - mirages of an idyllic countryside are drifting over the apocalyptic dump...

The title refers to Huxley's dark anti-utopia, but also to Shakespeare, from whom he took this title. And there is even a storm and an island here - except that for Shakespeare's heroes the promise of happiness is the world of the civilised land, here it is the other way round: the remedy and the achievement of dreams of a better future is to come from the wild. The text is not devoid of humour, although it is difficult to classify it as a comedy drama. The author employs the metaphor and poetics of a surrealistic dream. Initially, the dreams are only dreams, with time the oniric reality will dominate the realistic action. The play is full of meaning on several levels.

In the description of the dramatis personae, the author outlines the initial situation: "Marriage. He, A, past forty, she, B, still before. Experienced in life. A is a prominent man, he holds an important clerical position, but he is deadly bored. He devotes every free moment to working on his life's work, which he calls "The Book", in his opinion a synthesis of literature, philosophy and religion. B is fully devoted to her husband. She suffers, disappointed by A, but patiently abides by him and cherishes him, fulfilling all his desires. Both of them live for their dreams - A dreams about the immortality that his work is supposed to provide him with and B about familial happiness and a sense of security at the side of her beloved man."

And, although he dislikes guns and prides himself on his pacifism, works in a company that benefits from the war the country is currently waging. "Oh, yes! I'm in the back! And I'm very good at it!" He doesn't protest because "if not them, then us." Comfortable, fearful, withdrawn, clumsy, erotomaniac raconteur, compensating for his complexes by constantly verbalizing his desire for sex. He wouldn't want anything, God forbid, to change, he's clinging to his wife, his job, his piece of land. B is the opposite. Exposing mercilessly his weaknesses, she would finally want something unpredictable to happen, she would want a "New World". B: "Have you noticed how much mud is there?", A: "This mud is our homeland".  It is not known whether, even though the word appears on his lips, they are still united by love, or just a sick attachment, a feeling that they are condemned to be with each other. He, needing her care, she... needing to be needed? And maybe, like Beckett's couples, they would have stayed in such a harmonious duo forever, drawing the meaning(lessness) of the day from tormenting each other and reproaching each other if they hadn't decided to give themselves a chance by going on a journey.

Arthur comes to his family home in the countryside from England for his mother's funeral. On this occasion a meeting is held with: the younger sister, Father and a "friend of the house" (read: Father's former lover, now functioning as his caretaker and nurse) - Mrs. Lila. Arthur is in his 40s, he is "halfway there", but he has not achieved much in his life, although he used to show so much promise. He has fallen from his dreams of designing lofty structures down into a bleak reality: he is an overworked lorry driver. He drinks, does drugs, sets up fake accounts on erotic portals, multiplying his conquests. Ever since he parted with his former love Hania (from whom he fled fearfully, unsuccessfully searching for the erotic ideal of his mother in women), everything is just a "fall":

He says that he doesn't think he loves his wide. He declares his love to Hania, offering to come back, just to withdraw again a second later. He doesn't know anything for sure. With one exception. His little son is in the hospital, dying of cancer. Arthur knows he'd sacrifice anything for his recovery. Arthur's younger sister, Little one, hasn't really made a life for herself either. She lives with the memory of her mother's rejection as a punishment for the inappropriate choice of her husband. Her husband, Jacek, is a terrible bore, still dreaming about big business, and their closeness seems to be barely a memory.

In this drama, everyone has trouble showing their feelings. Siblings are clumsily hugging, Hania and Arthur, unable to talk to each other, "play a game", Father is eternally contemptuously ironic, Hania is finds talking to dolls easier than to her family. They also have problems with communication. As in the symbolic scene with little Arthur walking by our mother's side, trying very hard to say something important - he will make another attempt only when his mother is already dead. Everyone also has deep and long-standing grudges against everyone else.

A cynical, ostentatiously crude Father has a grudge against his late wife about a wasted life. Little one and Arthur have a grudge against the insensitive Father who is always escaping into his writing. The Little One has a grudge against her brother that he neglected their mother, who in turn had a grudge against the Little One and therefore did not speak to her for fifteen years. Everyone is affected by this drama - except perhaps the kindly Lila, who, finding consolation in poetry and trying to patch up the gaps in family communication with the quite common method of consumption ("eat, eat"), somehow reconciled herself with the Father's spitefulness, pushing her around and the role of "the stupid one". Everyone is also emotionally entangled in each other. Is there anything hidden under the armour, spikes and masks? Is it still possible to untangle the knots caused by mutual wounds?

The drama will culminate in the moment when Father reads his late wife's letter summing up their family life (but was it truly written by her?), and immediately afterwards Arthur finds out that his child has miraculously recovered. Then Arthur will talk to Voice and makes decision to consciously direct his fate, resulting from the fact that Arthur offered himself to God in exchange for saving his son. This decision is a leap into the dark. However, halfway through, a choice must be made...

The contemporary, natural language of the dialogue, has been deprived of any punctuation - as though the author wanted to leave the distribution of accents and tensions in the utterances up to the actors, or maybe emphasize the "roughness" of verbal contacts of the presented family.

The poetics of the drama brings to mind Beckett’s work. The ritualisation of physical and verbal actions through repetitiveness, precision, regularity and concentration gives them an almost religious character. Stage directions are as important as dialogue. You can implement the clues in them on stage, but it is no less fun to simply read them. In this ritualisation of trivial everyday activities, in giving them a poetic dimension, in creating a picturesque effect "from nothing" - the drama can also bring to mind the prose of Myśliwski. Or Grzegorzewski’s theatre (for both of them the scene of "poetic" peeling of an apple described in the stage directions would fit in perfectly well).

Long, gray, thinned hair and a disorderly beard, thick socks on legs and threadbare slippers, in hands:  a spoon, a book, or an old hat. All we know about the Old Man is that he once loved, and he loved two beings: a woman and a dog. He could not live without her, every short parting was an ordeal, but he also could not live with her - only "with her and without her". He stared with reverence at the window of the house, standing in the shade of an increasingly leafless apple tree, postponing the moment of his return infinitely, enjoying the fact that she "is there for him". So the woman left, but there was the god left, which, as well as the memory of her, became the purpose of every day - and at least he could get truly close to the dog. But after the woman, he lost his dog. "You haven't protected let go embraced anything”. The Old Man was left alone with his emptiness filled with a ritual of trivial, unnecessary activities, physiology (washing, toilet, dressing, eating, sleeping or insomnia) and constant consideration of finally washing the piled up dishes. He moves around, digging corridors among papers, souvenirs and trash. Always in a certain order: bed - window - toilet - bowl - kitchen - table - box. His thoughts circulate from "station" to "station" of his torment, of which there are, of course, fourteen:

"The first where I met her for the first time / The second where I touched her for the first time / The third where she cried because of me for the first time / The fourth where I was unfaithful to her / The fifth where I came back with a promise of improvement / The sixth where I doubted our future / The seventh where I regained hope and shared hope with her / The eighth where I saw something in her eyes that terrified me This was her future departure / The ninth where calm came, built on the sand of our days and nights/ The tenth where she said life was a pile of dirty dishes and I didn't believe her / The eleventh where she laughed at my words about love tricks / The twelfth where I didn't keep an eye on her I let her out of my arms / The thirteenth was the station where I lost all, my last living creature / The fourteenth where my pyre burned down and darkness absorbed the smoke from my pyre"

For all activities, as well as breaks between them, the exact time is determined by the author - 7 or 10 seconds. The whole action of the drama is repeated in three successive rounds at an increasing pace. During the action and during the breaks you can hear the clock striking the hour steadily.

Dog is a beautiful, lyrical impression - about love, loneliness, emptiness and filling it up, about waiting - the value of which is intensified by the lack of definition, the lack of closure. This drama is a bit like a prayer of supplication, like moving the beads of a rosary in your fingers. This supplication will probably not be answered, but it will relieve despair, give meaning to your days.

We are watching a TV talk show "On the edge of a knife", featuring "briefcases" of confidential information, God, abortion, euthanasia. The programme is run by Barabbas, who is hailed as the "Golden Boy of Television" and for whom, as he says, the most righteous God is the audience. What happened to Barabbas when, miraculously saved, he gained a chance for a new life,' Jarosław Jakubowski wonders, as he repeats after Herbert.

Barabbas admits that he has trouble getting out of character, taking on more masks, and has the impression that his "life is a continuous TV show". He is as confident as he is lying. Appearing to have an open discussion, he does not allow the voices inconvenient for him to speak. For viewers, he is an objective moral authority, but - although he says goodbye to his wife Madeleine with the words of Saint Louis to Mary "Totus tuus" - he rents a room with his lover for hours. He won Madeleine's affections by fighting fiercely for her, not so much out of love as out of jealousy for his colleague (with the nickname "Messiah"): courage, moral infallibility, and a woman by his side, as if from a beautiful picture. So he got involved in order to take over at least the last one. And he did it when a friend, after someone else's denunciation, found himself in prison for a long time. Did he denounce Barabbas? We don't know, although, apart from uncertain signatures on the documents, there are other indications. One of them is Barabbas' fear that Jack appeared in the city and that he might want something from him.

Jack, the former hero - that Messiah whom people sentenced to be crucified, saving the life of a villain - is a loser. He drinks, looks like an old man, and has to borrow money to make a living. He was raped and beaten for a long time in prison, from which he never recovered, becoming a "bitch" forever. He never came to terms with losing Madeleine. But it's not just about her. He wants Barabbas to face the truth.

The fairy tale writer Madeleine once made a choice and is consistent. Ready to fight for her husband through any means, ready to pay in cash and with her own body for Jack's disappearance from their lives forever. Partially because she is not so sure about her former choice.  She's not so sure of her husband's innocence either. But she doesn't want to discuss it. She prefers to put her fears on the pages of a fairy tale, in life she tries to focus on the present moment - just like her husband. Jack's appearance interferes a little with these efforts:

Will Barabbas and Madeleine let themselves be sucked into the past?

This play is a battle of attitudes. On the one hand between Barabbas and Messiah, but also between Guest I and Guest II, who pronounce in the studio the familiar arguments of the two sides of the Polish political scene. "This drama - as the author writes - asks a question about the price you pay for staying loyal to your truth".