Oparek, Joanna

Berlin Porn is a 21-part poem/drama about lust, insatiability and violence, in which the report from a porn festival is intertwined with the story of Jacek Unterweger, a famous Austrian prostitute murderer from the 1980s and 1990s. Let's see what a reviewer had to say:

Strong reading, exciting and painful [...]. Torn apart by contradictions, stretched as if on a torture device, between hunger and excess, Eros is a source of eternal torment. The logic of desire makes fulfillment impossible, a man tortured by desire feels either lacking or overwhelmed. ... from nothingness, from emptiness, desire emerges. At the other extreme, there is the confrontation with the traumatic redundancy of the body, with matter ("cut something out of me"). Sex imperceptibly turns into violence, the boundary between the two is very unclear here, it is perhaps a matter of taste, not to say consumer choice. The title of the poem refers to the name of the Berlin festival of pornographic films. I have the impression that Oparek uses an ironic tension between the unbridled content of the films (it is often just about violence, mainly against women) and the "civilized" setting of this content: discussion panels, "discourses" about sexuality, a euphemistic language that dictates speaking about "actions" rather than about deeds. In this setting, or perhaps simply never, there can be no talk of "healthy" love.

(Julia Fiedorczuk, „Biuro Literackie”)

Whole life is a raw, contemporary drama with a lot of comedy and strongly outlined characters. At the end of the summer there is a meeting between a couple with complicated relationships and random tourists who travel by coach surfing. The tourists are taken to a spectacular villa in Tuscany, where, contrary to their expectations, they are welcomed by a mature couple from Poland - a feminist journalist and the author of not very popular crime stories. It soon turns out that the villa does not belong to them - they only use their friends' house during the holidays. The tourists are a beginner actress and a student still searching for his way in life. They act like a couple, but the girl stresses that they are not a couple. During an extended evening, after dinner and a lot of wine and whisky, there are violent discussions and true vivisection. Myths and images are being revealed. The young actress receives a call to play in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which further stimulates the atmosphere, as everyone notices the analogy of the situation: two drunken couples and a harsh psychological game. Consciously referring to the popular play, the writer and his wife arrange a real show of marital hatred for random guests. Frustrations, resentments and secrets that can only be revealed to complete strangers, who are never to be seen again, come to light. The biting irony turns out to be a more dangerous weapon than a shotgun taken out of a showcase in the hands of a drunken "master of the house". After all, humiliation and insults can only be endured until a certain point. And only until the accidental witnesses of the marital carnage remain uninvolved. The game begins, which cannot be interrupted anymore. No one will come out of here as a winner, but also no one will let themselves be defeated. Both protagonists of the drama formulate their life manifestos and immediately question them, presenting at the same time a range of varied emotions, attitudes and views that a modern woman has to define herself with, and often simply test them out on her own. The challenge that this situation poses to men makes it possible to present the crisis of masculinity in a nutshell. And if something can save the night, it is a moment of bitter truth before dawn, which each character discovers for themselves.

The main point here is fear, apprehension and suspicion, which are provoked by "historical traumas". It's also about pride and the thin line past which it gives rise to conceit. Numerous stereotypes are viewed under a magnifying glass, stereotypes which often block the possibility of joint actions, and which represent many shades of chauvinism. It is interesting that the text was created as a result of the international workshops conducted this summer with young artists from Poland, Ukraine and Germany. Their idea was to create a common space in which the artists would have the opportunity to create and talk about many topics together. As Joanna Oparek said, during the workshops, the young artists themselves set boundaries where they could talk about their prejudices and fears without hurting each other.

It is hard not to have associations with the most famous stranger in literature, the one from Albert Camus' novels. While the French writer in his book shows a man alienated in the world of hypocrisy, it is different in Joanna Oparek's drama. Her stranger becomes the driving force behind the action. It is thanks to him that the characters of the play have a common task. He unites them and he divides them at the same time. He triggers fear in them. But who is he? Perhaps a guest? Maybe an invader? Because when we hear from the stage: "sometimes the guest and the invader is just a matter of naming." Where is the stranger? Do we know him? Or is the stranger only inside us? And bred in our imagination he steals our rationality? He grows inside us, making us turn into puppets driven by deft puppeteers?