Katarzyna Niedurny
‘IS IT AUNTIE YET?’ – STOCK CHARACTERS FOR A NON‑YOUNG ACTRESS

A daughter, a mother, and a grandmother are the protagonists of Dorota Masłowska’s most famous drama No Matter How Hard We Tried. Enclosed in a small apartment, somewhere among the capital’s block housing developments, they are an ironic representation of the Polish lower class. Simultaneously, they depict three generations of characters with their exaggerated but typical features: a rebellious teenager, a bitter middle‑aged woman, and a freakish grandmother immersed in memories. In this way, the popular author manages to capture, in addition to the generational conflict inscribed in the very drama plot, the situation of Polish theatre actresses and the typicality of the roles they play. Those roles, although they have some variants – e.g., the daughter more naive than rebellious – do not leave too many acting options. In addition, the women’s situation on stage is often defined by its attribution to a specific place in the family system and the position in the generational relay, which changes over time: the daughters move on to the roles of mothers and then grandmothers. The scope of characters tends to shrink rather than grow.

The basic question is: how do we know that? For the purposes of this article, we must assume it as a research hypothesis – difficult to prove. Is an actress’s impression of getting fewer and fewer interesting proposals as she ages a subjective opinion or a rule governing the whole theatre environment? The subject of stereotyping female roles in theatre and the shrinking of the stock character range and stage presence of the roles available to an actress as she ages is difficult to describe. It is a common opinion, a topic sometimes discussed in conversations and interviews. This knowledge is gained in the form of gossip and back‑room conversations, and in the case of the actresses themselves – along with the growth of their experience of life. The topic, however, becomes visible more and more often – albeit backed by imperfect research – both in works by authors focused on theatre and in theatre productions which give voice to the actresses themselves.

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Confining women to a specific emploi, the source of which is their bodily predisposition, has long been practiced in theatre. Agata Łuksza in the book Glamour, kobiecość, widowisko Aktorka jako obiekt pożądania [Glamour, Femininity, Spectacle. Actress as an Object of Desire], points out the stage genres which have emerged along with the development of capitalism, establishing the woman‑actress as a body without individual features, acting on the stage as an object that the male audiences – i.e., those who have means to buy a theatre ticket – want to possess. The distance created by the stage makes these desires unattainable, thus winding up the mechanism of constantly maintained desire which becomes the basic category of exchange between the audience and the need‑arousing stage; desire sustained by the needs of both the patriarchal and the consumer society.

Although the author focuses on spectacle‑like genres such as the revue or the burlesque, she also points out how this manner of positioning women on stage affects the understanding of their bodies in the theatre. To describe this dependence, she uses the concept of glamour:

the glamour femininity circulating, since the second half of the 20th century, mainly in the mass media but emerging out of the 19th‑century tradition of theatre, urban entertainment, and popular shows. By the concept of glamour, I understand a visual code shaped in the modern urban environment, using the dialectic of accessibility and inaccessibility of the viewed object and shaping the female body into an object of desire, an object of consumption, and a carrier of social aspirations.¹

Then, the author continues:

The glamour category allows us to look at the institution and history of theatre through the prism of the actress: places designated for actresses in this institution, ways of constructing the actress’s corporeality, and disposing of this corporeality in a theatre performance become the central issues here.²

Her attention is also attracted by the fact of appropriate formatting of the female body, intended for viewing, directly related to age: ‘In any case, the objects were young girls without family obligations; crossing the boundary of thirty years of age would blight their chances of employment.’³

Young, girlish bodies were precisely the ones particularly desirable on stage, as they carried associations with such features as joy, openness, innocence, as well as susceptibility to taking on meanings related to the watching subject’s sight. The actress’s carnality thus understood meant that, as she moved beyond her teenage years – with her body gradually becoming a record of her experiences and shifting her from the figure of a girl to the culturally conferred image of a mother or a wife – her person would become defective in the described process of exchange of impersonal desire. Thus, she would move outside of the canon of assigned stock characters the viewer is willing to pay for. And since corporeality is a pass for the presence on stage, the corporeality not fitting into the narrow canon of accepted images could easily take that opportunity away.

The question of how the viewer sees, of the viewer’s perception, or said another way, of the viewer’s vision, as well as the viewer’s gender is crucial in establishing such a world. This topic, in the context of a narrative Hollywood film, appeared in Laura Mulvey’s canonical text Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. As the researcher writes:

In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split into active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role, women are simultaneously looked at and displayed with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to‑be looked‑at‑ness. A woman displayed as a sexual object is the leitmotif of erotic spectacle: from pin‑ups to strip‑tease, from Ziegfeld to Busby Berkeley, she holds the look, plays to and signifies male desire.⁴

Mulvey, creating the category of the male gaze, highlights the ways of creating a film narrative aimed at a male audience, fuelled not only by the plot itself but also by the manner of film editing and the formal solutions used in it. She points out that, in this way, young female bodies are assigned, by definition, one basic task for which the entire film machine works – to wear a costume, as transparent as possible, made out of the active recipients’ desires. In this way, a certain paradox arises. It is the viewer, or rather his desire, that is assigned an active role, contrasting with the passivity of the actress’s body exposed to public view.

Jowita Mazurkiewicz points out that this theory, immersed in the world of the canonical Hollywood movie, can be translated into the specificity of theatre. She writes:

Theatre is usually not established by framing, camera movement, or a subjective point of view. It would seem that the theatrical image, tangible and available in its entirety, is neutral and unmediated by anyone’s gaze. However, theatre uses light, perspective, and action plans as well as specific modes of representation and narration. Yet, in the audience, the spectator sits with their own visual habits and ideas that theatre can fulfil or invalidate.⁵

This tension between the gaze and the female body exposed to viewing, recorded in 19th‑century images and continuing to this day, is one of the most important reasons for limiting the stage possibilities of actresses as they age. And although the situation is gradually changing, its pace is slow in hierarchical and tradition‑based theatrical institutions. Beauty as a basic determinant of talent is a recurrent topic of conversations that the HyPaTia feminist research project conducted with actresses.⁶ In one of the interviews, Eugenia Herman, a teacher and actress with rich stage experience, points out that the situation in colleges has currently changed in so far as classical beauty is less important than representing a specific type.⁷ The topic also appears in Michał Telega’s drama Aktorki. Przepraszam, że dotykam [Aktorki. Apologies for Touching],⁸ written in 2019 and based on interviews with students of the Academy of Theatre Arts. The protagonists complain that they are judged based on appearance; once assigned, the character type follows them throughout their education. They say: ‘IT’s EASIER TO CAST ACCORDING TO APPEARANCE, THE WORK WILL BE DONE FASTER, NO NEED TO DIG IN IT SO MUCH. THERE ARE a FEW OF US IN THE GROUP – THREE OR FOUR, ALWAYS CAST IN THE SAME WAY.’⁹ The actresses also note that the situation is different in the case of male students, who get a chance to play more diverse roles.

This tension between the gaze and the female body exposed to viewing, recorded in 19th‑century images and continuing to this day, is one of the most important reasons for limiting the stage possibilities of actresses as they age. And although the situation is gradually changing, its pace is slow in hierarchical and tradition‑based theatrical institutions. Beauty as a basic determinant of talent is a recurrent topic of conversa­tions that the HyPaTia feminist research project conducted with actresses.

In this article, I wanted to look at the ways of getting out of this patriarchal dependence. I will focus on three productions tackling the topic of the actresses’ age and its impact on the roles played: Ciotunia (Auntie) directed by Weronika Szczawińska,¹⁰ Edukacja seksualna [Sex Education] directed by Michał Buszewicz,¹¹ and Łatwe rzeczy [Easy Stuff] directed by Anna Karasińska.¹² I will also check the course of the deglamuo­risation process described by Agata Łuksza, ‘accomplished through the extraction of the material and historical aspect of the glamour body, and thus leads to the emergence of a subject, even if broken and incoherent, suppressed in the prior glamourisation process.’¹³ In addition, I will check how giving voice to actresses changes their stage position and affects the way they are represented.

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‘Is it Auntie yet?’ the performers standing on stage – actress Milena Gauer and director Weronika Szczawińska – ask in panic. It is 2015, at the Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute, a series of performative readings is held within the framework of the cycle FREDRO. NIKT MNIE NIE ZNA [FREDRO. NOBODY KNOWS ME]. The play Ciotunia [Auntie], a comedy of mistakes about Małgorzata described as ‘an aged belle and a zealous weaver of love intrigue,’14 is essentially absent from Polish stages. It was not staged in that case either, instead becoming only the starting point for a story about the set of roles available to actresses over 30 in Polish theatre. At the same time, it is one of the first voices on our stage directly devoted to female drama characters and the limitations inscribed in them. And the director’s diagnosis is not optimistic. In the interview about the performance, she outlines the landscape in which Ciotunia was created:

Well, Milena and I are convinced that, in fact, no such thing has happened. In the end, feminism in Polish theatre is useful primarily as a promotional and PR strategy; it is triggered in need of a clear identification, situating the cultural product in the desired environment.¹⁵

The reading begins with a song. To the tune of Być kobietą [To Be a Woman, a 1970s Polish hit song – transl.], Szczawińska and Gauer enter the stage wearing dresses, blonde wigs, and tasteful fitted coats. They perform a whole arsenal of ‘feminine movements’ from sighs to fainting. They do it in a cold, structured manner, typical of the director. In it, the gesture is stripped of context, reduced to mechanical choreography. This allows the viewer to capture their stereotypical and canonical character, and thus permits them to decode the cultural cliché. Over time, the performers’ attempts to charm the audience are interrupted by a series of questions that they ask, questions which may at first seem incomprehensible or surprising. We hear comments such as, ‘Is it Auntie yet?’, ‘Is it mutton dressed as lamb?’

Over time, Szczawińska takes over the role of a director, also on stage. She walks aside and begins to give Gauer instructions. The actress is to play Małgorzata’s monologue from Fredro’s text, where the character analyses her amorous conquests. Initially, Szczawińska chooses the style characteristic of, as she says, ‘a city of up to 40,000 inhabitants’, which is to be guided by the saying: ‘It is easier to die in a plane crash than to get married at a certain age.’ Gauer follows the instruction in a comedic, deliberately exaggerated style in which the played character is detached from reality, including the reality of her age. The main joke is based on Auntie’s naiveté – how can she believe she can still have so many admirers after turning fifty?

The second instruction, characterising the style of a large city, exemplifies the notion of ‘in your body’s tragic trap’. It is easy to recognise the acting style seen in Krzysztof Warlikowski’s productions. At that time, Stanisława Celińska was usually cast as a suffering mother, troubled by her own old age. This time, Gauer plays her part with exaltation, writhing on stage, showing great emotions, verging on hysteria. ‘No other options are available in Polish theatre’ – the artists point out. This scene contrasts with another in which Gauer plays a monologue as if she was a man, finding many more stage styles and choices for her.

The ironic performance is composed of a series of scenes and recorded conversations between the director and the actress, all of which tell the story of how female theatrical roles are driven by affect, corporeality, and the need to please. In one of these conversations, Weronika Szczawińska asks Milena Gauer: ‘As an actress, do you feel like Auntie?’ She admits that ‘I’m not going to play some roles anymore’, emphasising that the time of playing daughters, shown the most frequently in theatre, is already over for her at the age of 34, while she is still too young for mothers. All she has left is the stock character defined as a funny servant. In the final scene, the artists quote a fragment of Auntie which begins with the words: ‘there is a threshold in a woman’s life’, about the ageing of women who leave the best years of their life behind, jumping over an invisible line. This threshold, although invisible on stage, is palpable in Polish theatre as it divides the actresses’ careers into distinct parts.

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Milena Gauer also stars in the play Łatwe rzeczy [Easy Stuff] directed by Anna Karasińska. Eighty‑year‑old Irena Telesz‑Burczyk and the already forty‑year‑old actress talk about their stage experiences. The performance begins in the half‑light. Slowly getting used to the darkness, the spectator’s eyes catch the presence of actresses on stage but cannot see them clearly in the fading light. At that time, they talk about their bodies – thus establishing their own way of perceiving them, as well as telling a story over which they have control. The audience’s gaze gets deprived of its power.

This short, one‑hour performance gives voice to the actresses – both talk about their work at the Stefan Jaracz Theatre, located in the cultural provinces. The main subject of their interest is the relationship between the actress – her body – and the stage. As Irena Telesz says: ‘My body has played different roles, different women. Of course, they were all big‑breasted.’ The woman emphasises that her bust became the pass for playing belles and thus defined her stage character gallery. It also became the key to engaging her in the strip‑tease scene to which a director forced her in the Gorzów theatre. But was it really like that? The actress plays with theatrical fiction, interrupting the flow of confessions with the statement that it was the director (Karasińska) who had written it all anyway. Her emotions aroused by using her body on stage are ambivalent too. Sometimes she talks about it bitterly, sometimes she proudly repeats the compliment heard from a spectator: ‘One day, buttons shooting from trousers’ flies will kill her.’ The actress does not make it easier for the viewers to decode the meanings.

Telesz also points out how her status and stage presence have changed with age. She describes her body in contrast to what it used to look like and is clearly not happy with these changes. In the end, however, she points out that only she can play in the production that the audience is only watching – only her body and the experience it carries are able to bear the story she is playing.

Milena Gauer leads the viewers down a similar path. There is a very interesting scene in which she presents the eponymous easy stuff, i.e., a limited gamut of movements accompanying the roles she plays. In a few minutes, the actress takes us around the different types of characters and the emotions they express. Here, too, she used ‘borrowed’ gestures, stripped of the context of the productions in which they usually function. Inserted in this performance, they arouse laughter among the audience. The audiences are also struck by how the roles played by Gauer are so similar to one another and how much they limit the actress, her creativity, and her possibilities.

Both women often speak of their age. They talk about changing bodies and roles they can no longer play. They have no illusions – on stage, their body is usually treated as a tool with a limited expiry date. Gradually, however, both take over the power in the performance, going beyond their limitations. The tools they use are the aforementioned initial half‑light, the sense of humour, and the constant thematisation of their own position on stage. In the last, improvised part of the performance, both women sit at a table. Gauer is naked, Telesz remains in a historical lady’s dress, put on carelessly from the beginning of the performance. They start eating rotisserie chicken (in some shows, there is also a cake), untidily and voraciously, fat drips down their fingers. The actresses take control of their image. They satisfy their appetites, thus distancing themselves from the need to control their bodies (the topic of dieting is also discussed on stage), as well as from the frames in which they are usually seen.

However, the actresses’ performance does not invalidate the role of their bodies; on the contrary, it gives them a special status. Irena Telesz is right, saying that nobody one could replace her and tell the story in this performance. It is the actress’s body that carries her experience, allowing her to create an alternative history of theatre, eluding the dates and great, masterly productions recorded in encyclopaedias. Easy Stuff recognises the corporeal wisdom and the knowledge resulting from the personal affective reception. The actress’s age becomes an asset that can only be acquired through experience.

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In the last, improvised part of the performance, both women sit at a table. Gauer is naked, Telesz remains in a historical lady’s dress, put on carelessly from the beginning of the performance. They start eating rotis­serie chicken (in some shows, there is also a cake), untidily and voraciously, fat drips down their fingers. The actresses take control of their image. They satisfy their appetites, thus distancing themselves from the need to control their bodies (the topic of dieting is also discussed on stage), as well as from the frames in which they are usually seen.

The problematisation of the mature actress’s position in the theatrical hierarchy can be seen ever more often on stage. The production sweet & romantic,¹⁶ staged at TR Warszawa, focuses on the characters’ attempts to get out of the roles imposed on them by age, gender, and sexual orientation. Eventually, actress Małgorzata Trofimiuk begins to question the casting decisions that doom her to the eternal part of a mother, limiting her potential. A similar motif also appears in Co się stało z nogą Sarah Bernhardt ¹⁷[What Happened to Sarah Bernhardt’s Leg] where Monika Świtaj talks about her corporeality through the prism of its usefulness in theatre. In Anna Smolar’s Aktorzy żydowscy¹⁸ [Jewish Actors], one of the themes of which is the long‑term staging of Tevye the Dairyman at the Jewish Theatre, the actresses talk about the generational relay. There, the dairyman’s daughters move on to mother Golda’s part as they age. As one of the actresses says: ‘I’ll play a daughter anyway, because I’m still suitable. I’ll begin to worry when I start playing Golda.’

The key to the deglamourisation of the female figure in the described productions, and thus to the appreciation of the stage experience and going beyond the rigid set of stock characters, is giving voice – the possibility of introducing women’s experiences onto stage. It enables them to crush the hard shell of the demands regarding the actress’s image, returns them agency, and creates a place to express disagreement. This is also helped by the derision of tradition and hierarchy, as well as showing the strangeness of what is fixed and inscribed in the category of invisible but harmful principles.

In her review of Easy Stuff,¹⁹ Jowita Mazurkiewicz notes how the director introduces the female gaze onto the stage; this observation could also be applied to the other productions discussed. This allows us to introduce doubt onto stage, along with the constant questioning of the world being built, tantamount to the clear definition of the rules governing it, restoring agency to the body. Enriching the narrative with the experience of being watched brings relief, even a certain kind of joy.

A great deal of joy can also be seen in Michał Buszewicz’s Sex Education. It is devoted to the difficult topic of getting to know and tenderly taking care of one’s own sexuality. The story is divided into three parts, which open with monologues delivered by actresses from three different generations and created so as to make us unsure whether they speak about sex or acting on stage. Amusing word play keep the audience in suspense. The first to enter the stage is Helena Urbańska – this is her debut performance at Szczecin’s Teatr Współczesny. The actress talks about the fear of being catalogued and assessed as a specific stage type; she enjoys the opportunity to talk about herself, she is visibly excited. Her elder Maria Dąbrowska talks about the role of habit, experience, and the challenges based on escaping routine and boredom, as well as maintaining a fresh perspective. At the end, grey‑haired Ewa Sobiech takes the stage. She looks at the audience playfully and begins: ‘I really like it that you have no idea what to expect from me.’²⁰ She talks about experience and joy, and also indicates that an actress of her age, going beyond the theatrical framework to which the audiences are accustomed, remains a mystery, a potential that escapes previous ideas, if only she is given a chance.

Thus, Buszewicz portrays three generations of actresses on stage. He shows that every moment of their career is full of possibilities. Taking advantage of them gives theatres a chance for a new, better opening.