In Burning bush, Konrad (Swinarski) and Kazimierz (Dejmek) visit Jerzy (Grotowski) in his Wrocław apartment. Jerzy, after four years of exile (following the events of March 1968) to foreign stages, is offered the position of theatre director at the Polish Theater in Wroclaw by the authorities. The artists, liberal with cognac, proceed to plan the form and repertoire of the new national stage. The directors share their experiences of working on both foreign and national stages, argue about theatrical aesthetics, work with the actor, and compare the profound ideas of the theatrical avant-garde. They come to the conclusion that there is no national theater without Greek tragedy, Shakespeare and, above all, without Polish Romanticism. Amidst the casual expression of opinions on contemporary theater artists, the dredging up of old quarrels, petty insults and the frequent raising of toasts, the blueprint for the new Wrocław theater is conceived, which... never sees the light of day.
Slobodzianek's play is part of a series of Quartets - chamber plays written during the pandemic. While each stands as an independent work, the dramas interweave seamlessly, complementing each other through shared ideas, form, and subject matter. The author blends in varying proportion historical facts, meticulously gathered through in-depth research, with anecdotes, gossip or even fiction. This strategy allows the exploration of the great ideas of twentieth-century theater history, where prominent artists engage in discussions amidst the constant interference of politics in matters of art. Meyerhold's biomechanics clashes with Stanislavsky's method of physical action, and Kantor meets Grotowski in a café in Kraków. And it is the founder of the Theatre of 13 Rows, appearing as the protagonist of most of the Quartets, who turns out to be of particular interest to the author. However, as Dariusz Kosiński notes in the afterword to the book edition of the Quartets, the focus is not on studying and interpreting Grotowski’s work. Instead, he “appears as one who, through his very presence, poses inquiries about theater and the sense of theater-making”. This is the reason why appreciating Slobodzianek's series doesn't demand a background in theater history. It is not just the brilliantly written, dynamically flowing dialogues, but also the profoundly relevant questions posed about the intricate relationship between art and politics in today's context.
In Burning bush Słobodzianek directly bombards the audience with anecdotes in the brilliantly crafted dialogues, inviting them to immerse themselves in the narrative with pleasure, even if not all historical references are immediately recognized. The author unceremoniously combines drastically different registers: discussions on staging the classics coexist within the text with mundane details, such as Konrad's socks, which haven't been washed in days. The narrative takes unexpected turns as intoxicated recitations of excerpts from the dramas of the Three Bards are interrupted by the intervention of a community policeman, to whom the neighbors complain about the noisy artists.
Burning bush, however, is not a love letter to a bygone theater, or a mere satire on great artists. Although Jerzy, Kazimierz and Konrad still being fueled by the fire of creative zeal, on the one hand they struggle with artistic and intellectual doubts, on the other they are constantly forced to make concessions or even collaborate with the authorities. Słobodzianek plays with theatrical ideas, biographies and anecdotes, yet, ultimately, he is quite seriously contemplating how to balance the artistic vision with the institutional and political conditions of its realization.