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When Blanka Zizka retires from her job as artistic director Wilma Theater At the end of July, it was truly the end of an era.
“I’ve been in this business for 40 years,” Zizka said in a video interview from Philadelphia, where the company is located. “That’s a long time.”
Zizka and her husband Jiri were born in Czechoslovakia and immersed themselves in the underground scene of the work of hipster giants of the late 1960s and early 70s, particularly Jerzy Grotowski and Tadeusz Kantor. The couple eventually emigrated to the United States and then joined the Wilma Project in 1979, becoming artistic director in 1981. They divorced in 1995, and in 2010 he became the sole artistic director of the renamed Wilma Theatre.
And now, at 66, the artistic director will be honorary.
Throughout Wilma’s history, Zizkas has championed the hard work of directors and playwrights. For example, he described Blanka in an email as “an intellectual steeped in theatrical language; a ‘writer’ director but a freethinker in what he wants the audience to see.”
Wilma also often showcased visually daring productions that stood out from the relatively naturalistic fare of many regional companies. In recent years, in Blanka resident acting company, HotHouse, exploring experimental techniques and pushing artists to exceed their ambitions. (He’ll continue to work 20 hours a month for the next two years, he said, likely spending some of that with Sera).
“As a young, queer, black artist in theater, he taught me that I could write Black queer stories at the scale he directed,” said James Ijames, now one of Wilma’s artistic directors, along with Yury Urnov. and Morgan Green. “It really revealed what I thought was possible.”
In the video interview, Zizka shared the joys and disappointments of her years running a regional American theater company. Here are edited excerpts from the speech.
Why did you leave Wilma now?
I started thinking very strongly about this last August. All of a sudden, I was spending some time with my son, now 44, who lives in Bellport, NY, and I always felt guilty about him because I felt like I had never been a great mother; Theater has always been my top priority. It’s hard to say, but it was the truth. So it was kind of a reunion in a nice way. I was also spending two or three hours a day biking in wetlands and I realized: Oh my God, I’ve lived in a windowless space my whole life. I started to love something I haven’t felt since I was 15-16, this feeling of freedom, the beauty of nature and colors. And I felt like I needed to experience more before I kicked the bucket. [laughs].
Still, you said in a 2015 interview: “Professally, I feel like I have 10 years if I’m lucky. Old women running theaters have no history.” Back then, did you defiantly plan to stay for another ten years?
I said it exactly out of those feelings, but I don’t feel it anymore. I feel like if I wanted to stay at Wilma, I could stay. I have energy, I have interest. I have definitely not lost my love of theater. But I have to go a different route. There is also the danger of becoming your own prison for anyone who has worked in an institution for a long time.
What were your earliest memories of the American theater where you grew up behind the Iron Curtain?
I never studied at university. I was working as a cleaner in the library during the day and doing the underground theater in the evenings. We used to go to Poland for a weekend just to see the shows and I could see the Living Theater and Bread and Puppet Theatre, the experimental-realized stage, Joseph Chaikin – these are my heroes. But that period was over when I arrived.
How were your early years in Philadelphia?
We were taking steps. We spoke very bad English – basically I couldn’t ask for a cup of coffee. For us, it was about how to survive. How do we support ourselves and our child? How do we learn English? I met people and offered to teach them what I knew from Grotowski. When you’re young you dare to teach and you know nothing [laughs].
Stoppard played a big role on Wilma, but what other artists are meaningful to you?
Athol Fugard was very important to me in the early days. In 1988, I produced “Post-Arrest Statements Under the Immoral Act,” about a white librarian and a Black teacher falling in love. And the game is done naked, 90 percent of the time. That was very daring back then.
Do you think it can be done now?
I do not know. This is a question. I want to mention Paula Vogel. An amazing, generous artist who takes care of his colleagues.
How?
I commissioned him to make a play and he was doing a workshop and I had to attend. I was scared because my English is so bad. “You can write characters the way you speak,” he said. Isn’t it easy? [Laughs] He was on me all the time and said, “You have to keep writing.” I did too. Another person who was very helpful was the Casserole. [of the musical “Passing Strange”]. He was my boyfriend for a moment, about six years ago. Like Paula, she encourages people to try things and not be afraid.
What do you think are some of the biggest challenges facing American theater?
In American theater, it’s only the freelancers who really create the work. How do you manage theaters when you are surrounded only by administrative staff? When foundations move away from the scene, you start to turn to wealthy individuals. They may be great people, they may really love you, but something may happen in their life and they move on. You need to make people feel good because of the need to get money from so many different sources; You have to throw great parties. In other words, your administrative staff is growing and you invest money there instead of art.
You came of age with avant-garde theater and never stopped pushing intellectual and aesthetic boundaries at Wilma. This is not the easiest sale.
Wilma was pretty progressive in terms of programming, but it was very difficult for us to retain the audience. In America we are currently in the grip of consumerism, where an audience wants theater to be exactly what I “feel, want it to be, and if not, I don’t like it and I will never go back”. “This is a very difficult situation to be in. The only reason I want to do theater is to explore life. Entertainment is part of life, but I don’t want theater to be an escape from reality. Reality is beautiful and there are many possibilities. But this consumerism and narcissism that I find in American audiences these days is really damaging to the theater culture.
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