Polish actress | Zuza Tehanu

We finished The World Of Yesterday play just a week ago and the life is already speeding up, pulling me in so many different directions that it’s hard to stop and reflect on what actually happened that week.

Well we played a show, twice!

The space was small, much smaller than we expected and were used to but we made it work (somehow).

Was it stressful? – obviously.

Was it amazing to be on stage again and become many different characters, and sing and dance, and almost cry, and be part of this moving machine which is the company, even only for one hour – absolutely.

That’s what it’s like in this business.

Often uncomfortable, never perfect, never 100% how we want it to be, always under rehearsed, with lots of pressure, last minute changes and green room dramas.

But we do come back to that place on stage, to that moment, to this feeling. We never have enough of it. Even if we are frustrated – it passes and then we try again and again.

And we dream about big stages with strong lights, full audiences and spatial mirrored changing rooms, we dream about it being our one and only, well paid job.

And we do it underpaid or for free, in tiny cupboard changing rooms, with one mirror for 10 people and one toilet, with 15 minutes at the end for changing, packing costumes and all the set up of the microscopic size stage, we do it anyway, because it’s LOVE.

The World Of Yesterday was a very short meeting of more than 10 talented people with dreams of a life different than their own. People of synchronised passions, of enough space inside themselves to compromise, be patient, let go and handle rejection, and enough energy to keep going, offer their own thoughts and feelings, deal with stress and dramas and still, despite everything, love what they are doing.

Is it incredible ? – yes

Is it impossible? – yes it is.

All actors and other creatives know what I mean but I feel that we are not talking about it enough with the wider public.

With the people who often look at us from an outside, who come and enjoy the show but maybe don’t know exactly how that happens that it comes to life. Who don’t follow us on our every day journey to rehearsals through the chains of tube and trains, through frustration and revelation moments. But mostly trains.

Who often don’t know how many times we wanted to give up, kick this life in a butt and slide into a comfort of a 9-5 bank job.

And how many times we didn’t and all those times made this show happen.

All those times we didn’t give up created a moment for all of us to share on that one evening.

This post was supposed to be about reviews because for many years I chased the reviewers for their feedback, for this star of validation of our temporary creation.

Because I thought that the art to be shown publicly has be GOOD, in opinions of others GOOD. That reviewers needed to like our play, announce it online on their blogs and then it would matter, then we would be welcomed in the circle of artists who are allowed to create MORE.

But that was before, years before even.

Now, after all the effort and life troubles of recent years, I am proud and grateful that we can just DO it, that we can make it happen. I know so many people don’t have that luxury.

Between everyone’s jobs, lack of funding for arts, lack of time and lack of money in people’s pockets to buy a ticket we still managed to create a show in a few months, perform it on a festival and sell it out on the last night.

It’s a success despite what anyone thought about the show. It’s a success because it was made, it had an imprint on our material plane and in people’s minds and hearts and wasn’t, like in so many other cases, just a thought, just an unfulfilled dream and that’s it.

My big and warm thanks to our director Anya Ostrovskaia for making it happen and to all the cast and crew for sticking with her.

~ Zuza