Hourglass

“Hourglass” (“Klepsydra”) is an intimate physical theatre solo project by an actress Monika Wachowicz and director Marcin Herich, based on his idea and concept. The word “klepsydra” in Polish language contains two significances. It means “sand clock”, but also “obituary notice”. On the other side hourglass is universal symbol of a running time and also shape of female body.

The performance is an almost non-verbal, partly naked solo, which join poetic of theatre of body, gestures and emotions as well as elements of dance theatre.

“Hourglass” (“Klepsydra”) by Teatr A Part is a kind of an intimate and sensual mourning ritual, her last solitude meeting with him who leave her or passed away. Ritual of her longing.

The performance was created in 2007 and is performed till now. As the years go by, the private context and the age of the actress playing the show change, also her body, but the expressive power and truth of the performance, which seems to gain in nobility and strength of expression, does not change. “Hourglass” (“Klepsydra”) is a stage essay about passing and femininity.

In the show we can find references to the works of novelist Milan Kundera and film maker Krzysztof Kieślowski.

Since its premiere, the performance has been presented dozens of times at festivals in 15 countries.

concept, script, stage moving and direction:
Marcin Herich

script co-operation, stage moving and acting: Monika Wachowicz

music: fragments of works by Archive and Keith Jarrett

text: travesty of fragment of poem “Thirty-year Woman” by Ryszard Krynicki

first night performance: 2007
duration of the performance: 40 minutes

PRESENTATIONS

*Cultural Centre of Katowice (Katowice, PL, premiere, 2007.05.12)
*Cinema Theatre Rialto (Katowice, PL, International Theatre Festival A Part, 2007.06.16)
*Olsztyn Castle (Olsztyn, PL, Olsztyn Artistic Summer, 2007.08.16)
*Carpe Diem Club (Częstochowa, PL, Festival of Garden Theatres, 2007.08.19)
*Teatro Scalpello (Fiorentino, RSM, Theatre Festival Calanchi, 2007.10.06)
*Korez Theatre (Katowice, PL, 2007.10.18)
*BWA Studio (Wroclaw, PL, 2007.11.09 & 2007.11.10)
*Cultural Centre of Rybnik (Rybnik, PL, Night Provocations, 2007.11.22)
*Cinema Theatre Rialto (Katowice, PL, 2007.12.15)
*Small Theatre (Tychy, PL, 2007.12.19 & 2008.02.19)
*Korez Theatre (Katowice, PL, 2008.03.19)
*Theatre of Eight Day (Poznań, PL, 2008.03.28)
*Cultural Centre (Gryfino, PL, Festival of Intimate Art Forms, 2008.04.12)
*Cultural Centre (Ostrów Wlkp, PL, Festival of Independent Theatres, 2008.05.17)
*Muzeu Etnografic (Cluj-Napoca, RO, MAN.In.FEST Festival, 2008.10.21-22)
*Theaterlabor Bielefeld (Bielefeld, D, Theaterfestival 360°, 2008.10.25)
*Cinema Theatre Rialto (Katowice, PL, 2008.11.02)
* Youth Creative Club Plama (Gdańsk, PL, 2008.11.17)
*Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Alexandria, EG, Creative Forum, 2009.02.08)
*KTO Theatre (Kraków, PL, 2009.02.13)
*Puppet Theatre (Mogilev, BY, Theatre Forum M.@RT.KONTAKT, 2009.03.24)
*Hala C (Prague, CZ, Mezinarodni Festival Nulty Bod, 2009.09.23)
*Meteorit Theatre (Bratislava, SL, International Arts Festival Meteorit, 2009.10.13)
*Fifth Theatre (Omsk, RU, Festival of Youth Theatres of Russia, 2009.10.28)
*Praga Theatre (Warszawa, PL, 2010.01.27)
*Ludwik Zamenhof Centre (Białystok, PL, 2010.01.28)
*Grodzki House of Culture (Gorzów Wielkopolski, PL, 2010.02.19)
*Societatheater (Dresden, D, ‘Szene: Polen’ Festival, 2010.05.07)
*Tiyatro Maan (Istanbul, TY, Integral Move Festival, 2010.05.09)
*Sala Studio (Arad, RO, Underground Theatre Festival, 2010.05.17)
*District Museum (Bydgoszcz, PL, Review of Off Theatres ACTION, 2010.07.30)
*Stara ProchOFFnia (Warszawa, PL, ‘The Doll is also Human’ Festival, 2010.11.13)
*Marchołt Club (Katowice, PL, 2010.12.13)
*Cinema Theatre Rialto (Katowice, PL, Teatr A PART Festival, 2011.02.10)
*Marchołt Club (Katowice, PL, International Performing Arts Festival A Part, 2011.06.17)
*St. Dominik Church (Zadar, CR, Festival of Contemporary Theatre ZadarSnova, 2011.08.13)
*Theatre ROW (New York, USA, United Solo Theatre Festival, 2011.11.05)
*Teatr Rozrywki (Chorzów, PL, Teatr A PART Festival, 2012.02.21)
*Korez Theatre (Katowice, PL, 2012.03.15)
*Pinceszínház (Budapest, H, International Monodrama Festival, 2012.03.26)
*Szwalnia Theatre (Łódź, PL, 2012.05.09)
*Pozoriste Pinokio (Belgrade, SR, Monodrama and Pantomime Festival, 2012.07.06)
*Town Hall Theatre (Galway, IR, Colours Fringe Festival, 2012.07.07)
*Korez Theatre (Katowice, PL, 2012.11.12)
*Theatre in Window (Gdańsk, PL, 2013.11.30)
*Stage/Atelier of Teatr A Part, Katowice, PL, 2014.01.19)
*Spa House (Jastrzębie Zdrój, PL, Festival of All Arts, 2014.10.24)
*Korez Theatre (Katowice, PL, Metavera Art Festival, 2014.11.06)
*Palazzo Gambassi (Campsirago, I, Il Giardino delle Esperidi Festival, 2015.06.21)
*Stage/Atelier of Teatr A Part (Katowice, PL, Sabbath, 2016.11.18)
*Teatro Studio (Rovigo, I, 2016.12.17)
*Divadlo Ponec (Prague, CZ, Žižkovská Noc, 2017.03.25)
*Stage/Atelier of Teatr A Part (Katowice, PL, 2020.02.09)
*City Cultural Centre (Tychy, PL, Tychy Performance Festival, 2020.10.11)
*Stage/Atelier of Teatr A Part (Katowice, PL, International Performing Arts Festival A Part, 2021.06.15)
*Terminus A Quo Theatre (Nowa Sól, PL, Meeting of Open Theatre, 2021.11.19)
*Stage/Atelier of Teatr A Part (Katowice, PL, 2022.01.28)
*Stage/Atelier of Teatr A Part (Katowice, PL, Art in the Service of Spirit and Body, 2024.02.19)
*Centre in the Suburb (Wrocław, PL, Mandala Performance Festival, 2024.05.23)
*Stage/Atelier of Teatr A Part (Katowice, PL, 2026.05.10)

CRITICS

A body trapped in time
I’m always sceptical about nudity on stage, not because of the prudery, but only because to my regret, nudity in theatre is groundless and it is only trying to make a poor spectacle more attractive. In the beginning I thought it will be the same with the “Hourglass”, but soon enough I became convinced that I was wrong. Monika Wachowicz convinced me with the last scene of her artistic vision, touched me deeply and I felt “pressed me into the chair so forcibly” that I found applause inappropriate. Not because the actress’s actual play was not worthy it, but because it would interfere with the atmosphere that was created and it wouldn’t fully express the emotions evoked by her.
The spectacle is a reflection on time, passing by and inevitable death. It’s not my job here to interpret all the artistic solutions used in the spectacle, but I would like to mention a few. Clothes played a big role. When Monika Wachowicz shows up on the scene, she wears high heels, men’s trousers and the shirt. After a moment she starts to strip, but it becomes apparent that underneath she wears another blouse and a skirt. She arranges men’s clothes on the floor with perfection and tenderness. They could symbolise a beloved person taken by death. For me personally it is a metaphor of something else – a woman saying goodbye to some part of herself, that is lost forever. She loses other layers, which had grown upon her with time, to show us at the end of the spectacle the whole truth about ourselves. If we look closer at it, the spectacle can be seen as a study about femininity, her condition in culture, reflection on her masculine and feminine element. When the actress loses the rest of the clothes, it is a metaphor of her slow death – not only her organism is dying, so is her soul, and in some cases the soul of a man dies much sooner than the body. In the last minutes of the spectacle, the actress stays naked, but she doesn’t let us look on herself as something seductive or attractive. The body has been shown as something material, as something worthless. Wachowicz shows us the whole brutality of nudity, the limits of human body, its weakness, ugliness and helplessness. An additional factor, moving the audience’s imagination, is the short fragment of Ryszard Krynicki’s poem titled “Thirty-year Woman”. It is a very personal confession of pain and lack of illusions. Of a woman suffering and looking for comfort in suicidal death. Monika Wachowicz played honestly and truthfully. She was faithful to her role. It’s hard to find out how much of it was a fiction and how much the true experiences of the actress herself.
The close contact she kept with the audience didn’t let us being indifferent or distanced to what we had seen on the stage. The actress publically stripped not only her body but also her soul and that requires a great courage.
Barbara Wojnarowska, Dziennik Teatralny [Katowice, Poland]

Measuring suffering
“Hourglass” is a chamber spectacle, a study of a woman suffering in form of the dance, gesture and body. A touching project of Teatr A Part is the reflection of time passing by and the inevitable end, death. “Hourglass” is a study about suffering in loneliness. Woman going through the loss of men. When she shows up on the scene, she wears men’s trousers and a shirt. After a while she takes them of and arranges the jacket and trousers on the ground. The clothes signify a men, who is not there. Actress is doing the same movements, perfectly performing each of the movements. She fills theatrical space in the rhythm of the music so it will fill the emptiness of solitude. She is hypnotising the audience with gesture, mime and emotion, which she performs. The movement and emotion expressed trough her body say much more than the words. Woman is saying goodbye to a feeling, the men, who disappeared from her life, taking some part of herself. By losing her clothes she cleanses herself emotionally. She discards off her clothes as she would the burden and pain filling her inside. The movement and gesture are combined with the music, which expresses the notion of the spectacle. The actress strips off in time to the music, as she discards her clothing, she slowly dies. She can’t bear the loneliness. She can’t forget about the men and the pain which fills her. Monika Wachowich touched all the audience deeply. She is faithful and true to the struggle she performs. The perfect performance of the artist is the high point of the spectacle. With her body she shows the passing by of time, which kills the feeling and the man. The hourglass measures the time, the actress measures the suffering and pain. “Hourglass” is a great spectacle expressing the emptiness that can not be filled. Love ends like life ends. Death or loss of a beloved one causes a pain, which you never lose. It is a burden that has to be carried everyday. Time heals the wounds, but can you forget?
Agnieszka Manowska, Dziennik Teatralny [Katowice, Poland]

Under the sign of time and space
The last spectacle of the festival was “Hourglass” performed by Teatr A Part. It’s hard to pass by indifferently to the spectacle presented at the festival, but telling a story about it won’t be enough, as words cannot describe the accompanied emotions. Most certainly the performance was about the emptiness and loneliness, but also about inability to understand and overwhelming pain, probably after losing a men. Nudity of the actress exposed to the audience for a long was in this case fully justified. After taking off a men’s clothes, and then woman’s dress, the actress became denuded. Her very self has been the only mask, the form alone marked her identity and when it was gone, releasing of completeness became impossible to achieve. And only overwhelming emptiness was left.
Zuzanna Mikołajczyk, Dziennik Teatralny [Ostrów Wielkopolski, Poland]

MAN.In.FEST! Day four
The presentation of the spectacle “Hourglass” of the A Part in the solo act of Monika Wachowicz in Ethnographic Museum in Cluj-Napoca during Man.In.FEST Festival left a strong trace in audiences minds. It is rare to see a spectacle that will function so well and act on people, abstracting from the whole discussion about its concept and timing of the play.
Here we deal with – at last- the story. The story shown is a continuation of relation between woman and men, leading to a painful end. The actress on the empty stage, primarily dressed in the men’s clothes, in the final sitting naked on the floor, arranged on the floor black, rejected clothes becoming an empty form after lost men. The men has died. In polish the word “hourglass” means also “obituary notice”. Under pressure of her own memories, the actress is performing an erotic ritual for her absent, lost men. Through out illusion, made by the play, all her almost private gestures are not worthless and come to have universal meaning. Only when naked does she become fully feminine again. Practically everything that’s happening on the stage is the gentle ritual of solitude and human helplessness. Some of the audience have been disappointed with the rhythm of the story accusing it of fluidity, simplicity and predictability. Others, like I, were seduced seeing the intimate movements, very touching interpretation of human behaviours and perfection of the gestures. I simply liked the spectacle, especially few of the choreographic effects and visual metaphors (i.e. fast and faster movements of actress’s legs in the shape of the clock, symbolising brutality of the passing time) as well as the acting of the actress together with the music. Music accompanying the spectacle (recorded improvised jazz piano concert) amplified the drama.
The spectacle has won the recognition prize of the committee of the Independent Theatre Festival in Poland in 2008 for “being uncompromising in showing emptiness and loneliness”. On the festival in Cluj-Napoca it deserves the prize for “the first spectacle shown on the festival in which I’ve seen truly working theatrical expression”.
Florian-Rareş Tileagă, agenda.liternet.ro [Cluj-Napoca, Romania]

Experience the Experimental
Monika Wachowicz’s solo act in the spectacle titled “Hourglass” is concentrating on showing different forms of solitude. In the last phase of the spectacle built on slow, simplified movements and minimal use of decoration or costume, attention of the audience is focused on the inner spiritual vibrations. The dancer of polish Teatr A Part does well with just single men’s shirt and trousers to tell the story about feelings of dominant emptiness. Her dance includes simultaneously being full of joyous feeling of freedom and also mourning grief.
Musca Szabolcs, www.hamlet.ro [Cluj-Napoca, Romania]

Chocolate, clowns and stains
The reception of “Hourglass” by the Polish Teatr A Part, was equally exciting but in a totally different key. Inspired by a poem called “Thirty-year Woman”, a dance and movement poetic piece, featured the suffering, frustration, anger and despair of an abused, betrayed and terribly lonely woman who tells us at the end: “My annihilation comes true continuously/Since then I seek my friends among the dead only/Inside me/ And among the forgotten.” Austerely dressed in a long-sleeved black shirt and blac trousers, Monika Wachowicz at first paced round the space in measured steps, occasionally tripping and performing some ground movements in which she bent her body extremely backwards and, supporting her self on one hand placed on the floor, revolved it horizontally, hitting the floor hard as she went round and round in that position with the feminine, high heels she wore so that they became the focus of the exercise.
The rest of the performance consisted of an act of gradual striptease in which the black shirt and trousers went first, followed by the miniskirt and revealing top she wore underneath, then by the underwear. Though there was no hint of titillation in the dancer’s movements or the music which accompanied them, and though her thin and childish body seemed quite frail and pathetically vulnerable as it was gradually stripped of its protective covering, you could feel the tension building in the auditorium and hear suppressed giggles. When the dancer sat quietly on a chair, facing the audience, and looking pensively at the black shirt and trousers she had earlier carefully laid on the floor in the shape of a supine male figure, then proceeded to take off her bras, some people edged forward in their seats, some actually gasped and a number noisily left.
Though I liked the performance and thought it quite moving, the reaction of the audience provided a more thrilling drama which vividly reminded me of the tense excitement of an Iranian audience during a performance in Tehran when the wig worn by one of the actresses slipped back a little, momentarily revealing a bit of her real hair before she quickly pulled it back. Writing about this wig incident several years ago, I said that though it was accidental, yet it was the most daringly experimental moment in the whole of Al-Fajir Iranian festival. As for me, I was positively delighted that director Marcin Herich, the founder of the Teatr A Part contemporary visual and physical theatre group had shocked some and discomfited many. Such feelings are rare in theatre nowadays and I was grateful to the Forum in Alexandria, and to Doma, for showing more courage, artistic integrity and daring than the organizers of the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre could ever be capable of. The CIFET who would never have admitted Hourglass in the first place, or would have heavily censored it if they did. Chapeau then to the Forum in Alexandria and to Doma.
Nehad Selaiha, Al-Ahram Weekly [Alexandria, Egypt]

Dancing with empty things
The woman’s fragile, her dress is to baggy. When Monika Wachowicz stepped on a stage from the dark – why was I sure this going to be a story about loss? I don’t know. Was it a single gesture that I didn’t catch. Maybe a half of a step? Or was it a smile – strange, indistinct, hard to catch? Probably. And it was clear (at once?) – he’s gone. Stopped loving? Left? Hit the road, insensitive? Perhaps. But I wish to think he’s dead. The fragile woman doesn’t want a stillness. She’s dancing. Wachowicz’s dancing monodrama consists of imperceptibles, only a filigree gestures, no importunate unequivocals at all. The fragile woman knows, that one ought to dance in a low voice on ashes. So that way she takes off the baggy dress, that way she pulls her legs from wide trouser and the same way – whispering her fingers – she throws away skimpy skirt, scant shirt, lacy finish stockings, bra and finally panties. She stay naked. Yes. With invisible, fresh trace of his shirts seam on a skin of her shoulder. She takes off an empty objects that’s left after he’s gone and lays them down to the floor so they make a shape of a flat figure. By impossibly delicate gesture she lifts up a black cuff, rubs it with her fingers, sniffs it, puts down. And then – a faint smile, just for a second, somewhere between an eye and a lip corner. That’s all. And let this be enough. That’s more or less how a forty minutes striptease of the fragile woman looks like.
Paweł Głowacki, Dziennik Polski [Cracow, Poland]

A body trapped in memories
The idea of the “Hourglass” is to show a world of memories, nostalgia, despair after a lost person. The character is a woman, the instrument is a body in motion, irreplaceable by any word. After entering the auditorium you could have impression that everyone were suspended, awaiting something unusual. It was such a situation, when, observing an event, you watch the others stealthily to confirm that you behave a right way. There was no dimmed light, no shade, no props to hide a naked woman. Only a man’s clothes and looming femininity. All ruined while the time passes by. Cause the “Hourglass” is a voyage around indescribable loss, it’s tearing off pieces of memories that once filled each form. The story is so much intense, for it relates or will relate to each of us. The performance attacks the audience by overpowering dose of helplessness, resignation and sorrow, which, although the performance is a few years old, still looks authentic on the actress face. And enormous dose of sensitivity.
Piotr Barański, www.madeinbialystok.com [Białystok, Poland]

Death while alive
Sand sifts through the fingers – a symbol of passing time. Man does not realise that with every second of his life he comes closer and closer to death. At first, death is distant, virtually unreal. Then a breakthrough occurs – the whole world changes. Death catches its victim unawares and mercilessly torments it. Dying is by no means quick and painless – one dies gradually, sinking deeper and deeper into the emptiness that emerges from a former life
“Hourglass” leaves an unimaginable sadness in the viewer’s consciousness. The tragedy that plays out before his eyes is all the more terrible because it is very real. Here is a woman who has walked through life by the side of her beloved man. Together with him she experienced moments of sadness and joy. Suddenly, he is gone – it is not known exactly what happened to him, but that is unimportant, because the most important thing is what his departure did to the woman. A hole was created in her soul that could not be patched up in any way. The protagonist tried to go on living as if nothing had happened, but the emptiness occupying the place where her heart used to be proved too deep.
The whole story, is all the more moving because it was presented through gestures and emotions that could be read from the heroine’s eyes. The woman spoke only once. She uttered an excerpt from Ryszard Krynicki’s poem ‘Thirty-years Woman”‘. These were frightening words, because one could only read one thing from them – a total resignation to life. She had given up. She could not cope with the loneliness she had decided for herself. After the departure of her beloved, she was also unable to trust anyone, and consequently allowed no one close enough to help her fill the void she felt.
What could be worse than to die while alive? Nothing, it seems.
The viewer learns about the emptiness gradually. The protagonist reveals the secret of her soul to him by shedding one garment after another. Finally, she stands before him naked and completely vulnerable. This is not, however, mere nakedness, but hypernudity (as Urszula Kozioł might put it) – shedding clothes is not art, it becomes art when it symbolises stripping the soul of all layers that were supposed to protect it from the world. It is the soul that plays the main role here, while the body has been treated objectively – like a worthless container to store a unique treasure.
Two people worked on the creation of “Hourglass”: Marcin Herich and Monika Wachowicz. The actress and director had to trust each other completely, as the performance is not an easy or pleasant one. What they have achieved is amazing – the atmosphere that is created during the performance is breathtaking. When the actress leaves the auditorium, the audience is waiting for something to happen – they have already grown to know the character and her suffering has become their suffering for a moment – so it’s hard to part, just like that.
Joanna Garbarczyk, Dziennik Teatralny [Katowice, Poland]

Body, soul, time and emptiness
An hourglass is a sand timer, an instrument that measures the passing of time. It is also a mourning announcement. Finally, it is the title of a stage project by A PART Theatre in which these two meanings are combined. Where life, the time that changes it, and death intermingle, complement each other, leaving a void.
The danger with monodramas is either boredom blowing off the stage or the actor trying too hard to prevent the audience from falling into it. Monika Wachowicz, performing in Hourglass, found herself in that perfect middle ground where there was no room to rest, catch her breath, look at her watch or even look away. Her performance, encompassing a theatre of body, gesture and emotion, was seductive and mesmerising, penetrating to the core. With a few square metres of white canvas and a chair at her disposal, she portrayed an imperfect body that imposes limitations. Stumbling over her own feet, the protagonist was unable to stand up, walk, perform basic bodily functions. These procedures were woven into a kind of dance theatre to fragments of musical compositions by Archive and Keith Jarrett.
But although the protagonist, through the symbolic burial of her black shirt and trousers, got rid of her limiting body, she still did not feel liberated. She was repeating gestures she had made before, lashing out at herself. Getting rid of more bonds was no easy task. The stockings gagged her mouth and hands, and it was necessary to throw off all restrictions, to bury the body on which tight conventions and taboos had been imposed. The ritual murder was carried out by pulling red lipstick over the neck. The funeral rite was completed by the precise arrangement of this shirt and trousers. What remained was a pure soul, the expression of which became the actress’s naked body. Liberated from the tight suit, however, she appeared empty, expressionless.
For the first time the words were spoken, an excerpt from Ryszard Krynicki’s poem ‘The Thirty-Year-Old Woman’. They feature children putting their hands under their skirts and old men groping women. For both, carnality plays a key role. And she, this woman in her thirties, is looking for love, but finds disappointment. She looks for friends, but only among the dead. She has nothing, she is surrounded by emptiness, nothingness. The title thirty years situates the heroine only between old men and children. She does not put the accent on age, which is after all the fullness of life. She cannot put it, because there is no fullness in a life deprived of love, friendship and all values. The only liberation seems to be death.
The actress’s nudity was full of subtlety and sadness. Her slow gestures drew the audience’s gaze, nothing escaped notice. All her actions were accompanied by soft music and light seeping from above. In just one scene, in which the protagonist made her feet the hands of a clock, rapidly moving across the floor, aggressive blue sirens and heavy guitar music were set in motion. The passage of time was also suggested by the sand spilling out of the heroine’s hands.
Katarzyna Głowacka, Teatralia [Katowice, Poland]

Photos: Jacek Lidwin, Przemysław Wiśniewski