Transforming Stream of Consciousness into a Theatrical Modernist Model

Abstract

One of the most prominent directors of the twenty-first century, winner of many international awards, Krzysztof Warlikowski, writes about highly artistic prose: ”Most often I turn to prose for guidance. Day in and day out, I find myself thinking about writers who, nearly one hundred years ago, described prophetically but also restrainedly the decline of the European gods, the twilight that plunged our civilization into a darkness that has yet to be illumined. I am thinking of Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust”. How is the stream-of-consciousness analytical prose of Marcel Proust, devoid of plot vicissitudes and action elements transformed into an audiovisual work?

Before Warlikovki, Proust's novel was filmed by the famous German film director Volker Schliendorf. What is the difference between the artistic concepts of film and stage directors? Tbilisi audience had the opportunity to see the play in 2017 at the Tbilisi International Theater Festival. 

What is the importance of showing theatrical performances and getting familiar with the latest Polish culture in the relationship between Georgia and Poland?

I will also discuss the Warlikowski version of Marcel Proust's prose interpretation. Marcel Proust breaks down the world into details in a literary text, describes these details with scrupulous accuracy and then arranges them into a whole as if like a mosaic. In Warlikowski's performance, each character is also meticulously crafted. All of them come with their own biography, completely different plastic, specially processed voice tone and movements. And all of them are united in the glass menagerie. This glass menagerie is imagined by Warlikowski as a modernist model of the world in the play. How does an early twentieth century novel transform into an early twenty-first century performance? The article offers the analysis of this process.