The Museum Heads to the Square

How does architecture influence the way we move? Can a building provoke us to act? The starting point for our workshop will be the idea of architecture as a grand stage for movement and interaction. We drew this concept from the book *Body, Memory, and Architecture*. During our exploratory walk, we’ll look at the city through the lens of environmental psychology and search for “architectural stimuli”—elements of space that tangibly influence our behavior.

 

We’ll use simple movement exercises (such as mindful walking, standing, sitting, or waiting) to explore how our bodies experience different places. The workshop draws on the concept of social choreography and treats the urban walk as a fully-fledged research practice. We invite you to discover everyday life and explore the city with your own body!

Our starting point will be Central Square—a space that brings together Warsaw’s most important theater institutions. During the walk, we’ll explore the exact locations of the Dramatyczny Theater, the Studio Theater, the 6th Floor Theater, and the Lalka Puppet Theater. We’ll learn about the history of these famous stages, their opening performances, and their most significant productions. Next, we’ll head to the new TR Warszawa venue currently under construction at the MSN to discuss the process of creating productions and the major transformations the theater has undergone over the past 30 years.

Our meeting will conclude with a joint, hands-on table read! We’ll read excerpts from the play *Tropical Madness*. For this, we’ll use Grzegorz Jarzyna’s original director’s copy from the TR Warszawa archives. You’ll learn what it’s like to work with such a document in practice, and to wrap things up, we’ll watch archival footage from that production—an event that marked a true turning point in the history of contemporary Polish theater.

Our walk will take us through the very heart of Warsaw, following the traces of architecture that no longer exists. Instead of looking at what is there now, we’ll try to conjure up the “spirits” of the old buildings and recall their former functions. We’ll visit the sites where pre-war tenement districts once stood, near today’s Parade Square and the Palace of Culture. We’ll explore the area around the former Warsaw-Vienna Railway Station, as well as the locations of cafés and shops that once shaped the city’s daily life. We’ll also talk about buildings that have disappeared from the landscape quite recently—we’ll recall the Emilia Pavilion, the iconic Sezam, the MarcPol Market Halls, and Poland’s first McDonald’s.

 

We’ll draw on archival photographs and stories to vividly imagine the structures, sounds, and atmosphere of the old Śródmieście that are no longer there. In this way, together we’ll discover the fascinating history of Warsaw through what is no longer there.

Host: Karolina Jabłońska