We are  really looking forward   for  this performance  “ A Couple of Poor, Polish-speaking Romanians” (author Dorota Maslowska). Trap Door Theatre from Chicago became a regular guest at our festival. Every time they surprise us with contemporary texts and unusual scenic decisions.  

 Max Truax, director:

Prior to working with Trap Door, Max founded and was Artistic Director for Filament Theatre Company in Los Angeles. He also founded and was artistic director for the experimental performance company twelv in Oberlin, Ohio, with whom he created a series of seventeen site-specific performance installations. Previous directing credits include Termen Vox Machina at Chicago’s Oracle Theatre, and Cassandra, Farewell Juliet, Gadfly, Blood Wedding, Salome, and When We Dead Awaken in Los Angeles. He also created and directed two experimental operas, BEING NOT NOTHING, and Furniture.

  How did you find out about this  play?  In what language did you read it first and  what was your first impression.

 I first read the English translation of the play.  It was given to me by Trap Door’s Artistic Director, Beata Pilch, who felt that it might interest me.  I was immediately struck by the earnest and self-destructive qualities of the language. 

  In  many reviews they write it’s about “national identity”  -   do you agree with it?

 I agree that the play is very much about national identity.  Though the play is set in Poland and serves as a critique of Polish society, I find that the play resonates with my perspective on American society.  In Maslowksa’s play, the characters’ national identity is inextricably bound to their class identity. In this case, the Romanis, or Gypsies, are a class of Polish society that is not accepted as truly Polish.  They are sub-citizen, much as many Americans tend to perceive our homeless. In tackling this play, I first set out to answer the question: Why would someone assume the identity of the outsider?  What motivates Parcha and Dzina to pretend to be Romanian?  

 Playing “ A couple…” in Romania  may have  the  same  provocative influence as  scheduling the   premiere  of “Borat”  in Kazahstan.  Do you recognize the fact that this text may hurt the feelings of Romanians?  What will you do if the audience may start  to leave the performance?

 I don’t imagine that a Romanian audience would find this text or our interpretation of it to be in any way insulting.  The references to Romania and the portrayal of Romanian people made by the characters are extremely outlandish so as to highlight the naivete of the Polish characters who believe them.

Was the text censored or softened by you?

 In the process of translating the text to English, some of Maslowska’s original idiomatic humor and satire may have been altered or lost.  However, we made no further editions to the text, except to adjust some of the British idioms for our American audience.

 Does the performace have a  visual symbol of the road, journey?

 The characters’ journey through Poland is represented entirely through projected images.  This is meant to underscore how the play’s reality is a matter of the various characters’ conflicting perceptions.  It is also used to suggest that the physical reality is merely a metaphor for the main characters’ psychological plight. 

Artistic Director and Founder  of  Trap Door Theatre (Chicago)  Beata Pilch :

"I felt I had something different and fresh to offer that was outside of the normal fare, something that was missing in and for the community. The regular offerings in the city were mostly mainstream high-end theatre productions or small storefront companies trying to repeat what the commercial houses had already succeeded in. This is why I wanted to provide Chicago with a truly exotic regimen and offer something that no other theatre in the entire U.S. was offering-American premieres of European work or rarely produced and obscure playwrights who for some reason or another were never introduced into our educational system.

I also wanted to know why this was? Why was the American theatre becoming so stale and conservative? Live theatre should give you the freedom to let your imagination run wild and make anything believable and exciting. Most of the scripts I choose to produce are very language heavy and need a bold creative concept to support the extremity of the ideas being presented and the style in which we perform them in. Therefore, I have traveled extensively to Europe over the last decade in search of these contemporary or "forgotten" scripts. I have created an ensemble and a style in which to work in with my actors to transcend the boundaries of "normal" or what I call "American psychological"  theatre and establish a new form of theatre/performance which includes all mediums of art: dance, film, music, and visual art.

It is my greatest wish to collaborate with artists of all genres to build a new kind of theatre that not only address issues politically or socially but also creates thought provoking concepts and stimulating relationships between the audience and performer. Theatre should be exciting to watch! It should be fun regardless of the subject matter. In todays technological era,  we are bombarded with images at a speeding rate, the brain starts to function differently and gets distracted easily, that is why I think American dysfunctional family theatre is growing tired and the society is not progressing. It is a safe theatre in a frightened world. I think an artist's responsibility is to awaken and educate the community with the truth and passion for that truth.

This is why so many of the texts I choose, such as "A Couple of Poor Polish- Speaking Romanians" can easily be deconstructed to the style of the Trap Door's mission and performance techniques. The freedom in interpretation lies in the poetry and imagery of the text and the skill to transfer that from the page to the stage is a rare gift that my company, its directors and actors, share and celebrate their craft with. Theatre is also about determination. An artist must be determined to make his voice be heard or it becomes a hobby and never reaches anyone. Art must make an impact on its people. It must be as important as life and death or it is pointless.

Therefore, a theatre needs to know how to serve the surrounding communities in which it encompasses. Chicago is a truly multi-ethnic city and Trap Door's programming is focused on that diversity serving the european neighborhoods it is composed of. Annually, we offer German, Polish, French, now also Romanian literature, to name a few, and feel the gratitude and appreciation from the patrons for each culture we honor. And because of all of this the critics have recognized this as a something very special in the city, and country."