Mikalaj Khalezin: I wouldn't divide audience to "Polish" and "non-Polish"
Euroradio asked several questions to the author of the play "Time of Women" on the occasion of the play's premiere in Warsaw.
Euroradio:
Why did the idea to combine two plays appear?
Mikalaj Khalezin: Initially,
we spoke only about my play "Jeans Generation". However, I presented
it about a hundred times in different countries. It was not interesting for me
to repeat this experience once again. Meanwhile, Natasha (Natallia Kalyada) had
a brilliant play called "They had dreams". So I braided the two plays
into one, so that the two texts became a one long play. The play "They had
dreams" tells about the events which happened 10 years ago, and we decided
that new stories happened to our friends, and they are closer to us than those
events in the past. The stories about the murdered and the kidnapped is one
side, and new horrible things appeared now.
Euroradio: How did you like
working with actresses of the Polish Theatre?
Mikalaj Khalezin: Unfortunately,
we had little time for working and rehearsals. It turned out that, instead of
the planned two months, we worked only for a month in fact. Therefore we had to
work fast, operatively, and so that the actors wouldn't get exhausted.
Moreover, such experience was very complicated for them. It was very hard for
them emotionally. They asked us in the theatre "Is it true that you always
cry at rehearsals?" And they indeed cried and laughed a lot. It was a very
emotional work: imagine two girls sitting in front of each other looking at one
another. One girl is looking at the one who is going to play her, the other is
looking at the one she plays. All this ends in tears, for both of them. They
start living their stories through here and now. This very first, and extremely
tough stage gave us an opportunity to work easier and faster afterwards.
Euroradio: Under which criteria
did you choose the actresses?
Mikalaj Khalezin: I
conducted two major castings. The first question to the contenders was whether
they were ready to speak about themselves. I had not read any CVs before this
on purpose. I was interested in another thing: to which extent a person is open
for information, how sincere and professional she is. We talked about their
life stories a lot and when I saw that there was a "story of
overcoming" in an actress' life, I knew she was capable of feeling and
understanding. This is why we looked for such stories, and in the end of the
play the actresses tell some complicated stories, this time from their own
lives.
Euroradio: What is there in the
performance to attract the Polish audience?
Mikalaj Khalezin: I
wouldn't divide the audience to "Polish" and "non-Polish".
Recently I have watched the movie "Mystery in My Eyes". The movie
depicts an Argentinean story but I found many useful, intelligent, touching and
lively things there for myself, the story really gripped me. It's the same
here. Of course, I cannot judge my own performance, it would have looked weird.
However, I have an impression that we managed to find an algorithm which could
attract the people in the audience.
Euroradio: Will the prototypes
of the "Time of Women" be present in the audience?
Mikalaj Khalezin: There will be five
women here today, and several men, who are directly connected with that, and
also their parents. They will watch all this. I don't know how they will take
it. It is interesting for me as a playwright and a director, I want to see what
these emotions will be like. However, as a human, I wouldn't want my friends,
the people who are close to me, to go through these hard moments once again.