29. 10. 2010.

PORTRAIT 2 - Radoslaw Rychcik

Radosław Rychcik is a young Polish director born on 1 January 1981 in a small city in the north of Poland, where he spent his childhood. His parents were both teachers.

 He first studied Polish Philology at the University of Warsaw, and then came to Krakow so as to attend Directing Studies at the Krakow Theatre Academy.

 Stage directing and working in theatre was a very late decision for Rychcik. He was not even used to going to theatre. But watching of a performance in Warsaw a few years ago changed his mind: he made a sudden decision to become a director. What he mostly wanted was to work with people - he says that he cannot imagine working alone, as a writer or a painter does.

 And indeed, that is the way he enjoys theatre. The main object for him is to talk about relationships between people. The theatre has the great quality of immediacy that he likes best of all. “It is quite banal but “now and here” is the thing I most like in theatre.”

 Even if the panorama of the plays he has directed does not reveal that (“Versus” from Bertolt Brecht’s play, “The Dictator”, based on Charlie Chaplin’s movie), he is not interested in talking about politics or social facts. In spite of the fact that plays are “of course always social or political”, he says he only believes in treating subjects that are very important to him. And these subjects have all to do with intimacy: loneliness, love and fear are his favourites.

 As a matter of fact, he also directed plays on significant texts that all talk about personal emotions: “A Lovers’ Discourse”, based on Roland Barthes’ book, and Gustave Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary”.

 However, he would not qualify his theatre as intimate: on the contrary, his way of showing emotions is a hysterical way. “I believe in people who scream about their emotions, desires”. With that in mind, we understand that the directors he says he was influenced by are very important to him: Krystof Warlikowsky’s and Kristian Lupathe’s Polish theatre, as well as all Flemish theatre, where body is so strongly linked to text, are his primary examples.

 Radosław Rychcik is a prolific stage director. In only three years as a theatre director, he has already directed seven performances. In that context, the Polish government seems to be helping him a great deal. “In Poland, there is a fine theatre system. Because theatres are financed by the government and the city. If you are good, you have a job.

Glas Marjorie