Alex! You're funny!
Aleksandra Gosławska's raw and live-action monodrama Stand-up from the Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Arts in Warsaw is an authentic account of the contemporary theatre environment, where students struggle for recognition in their field. A Faustian dilemma in the form of an endless marathon to reach success and recognition at the expense of one’s physical and mental health.
Why is a person surrounded by increasingly talented competition willing and able to kill the most valuable thing they have? Is this really an inevitable pattern or is it possible to get off the giant merry-go-round of "failure, success, more failure"?
Aleksandra Goslawska is a student in a very harsh and unforgiving environment, namely the theatre. She is under constant pressure and is expected to be totally focused, creative and, of course, a talent that is constantly on alert. Already the first moments of her "here and now" on stage are not standard. Hectic late arrivals, a different set design than Alex is used to, a crumbling microphone, and all-encompassing awkwardness instead of the hilarity expected by the audience. The audience goes nuts, seeming to stay for the show purely out of sympathy, mentally counting down the minutes until the end of the performance. But the opposite is true, this situation is more than familiar to them. The pressure from the outside that moulds us into fearful and adrenaline-filled robots. The more we try to make everything perfect, the more we lose our footing.
This monodrama, conceptually, is a perfectly thought-out fusion. It mixes the genres of stand-up, which is based on humorous forms on the border of awkwardness, and monodrama, which is the tragicomic inner confession of a man facing the obstacles of fate and lack of self-confidence. The production also features a trio of symbols strikingly reminiscent of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. A knitted mitten opens up to reveal traumatic and painful setbacks from the past. A statue of the Virgin Mary, posing as Meryl Streep, dialogues with Alex about the existential nature of everything. She tries, perhaps with a motherly urgency, to talk Alex out of all her pains and doubts. Finally, the giant ear of Virgil, hovering above her, tells her in a divine voice that ignoring all the signals of her body will be her ultimate undoing. In the darkness, recordings of the joyful voices of her classmates echo as they reminisce about what Alex was like when she was "alive". Alex's final dance, done while wearing a mask that doesn't let a hint of emotion through, is a kind of movement timeline of everything she's been through in her 27 years.
Stand-up can be seen as the confession of a young girl who believes she is a good actress, but just hasn't had a "good day" yet. The question is when that day will come and what she has to do to make it come.
