At first glance, Etel Adnan’s book-length poem There: In the Light and the Darkness of the Self and of the Other, isn’t a natural candidate for adaptation into a play. There are no clearly delineated characters, or dialogue, or plot.
But the Wilma HotHouse Company of actors and its innovative director Blanka Zizka aren’t known for easy, conventional, or boring theater. A diverse group of local actors who meet regularly for artistic training and bonding, HotHouse uses diverse theatrical texts to explore the emotional core of language and relationships.
Etel Adnan’s poem was the very first piece of writing the company read when it began in 2015. As part of the 2019 Fringe Festival, Wilma HotHouse adapts There into an evocative theater piece co-created by Blanka Zizka (Wilma’s artistic director) and visual arts pioneer Rosa Barba. FringeArts’ guide editor Christopher Munden spoke to Blanka in June of 2019 about the meanings and context of this seminal work of contemporary poetry.
Blanka Zizka
Christopher Munden: When did you encounter the poem?
Blanka Zizka: Etel is a close friend of Theodoros Terzopoulos, the director of and Ajax and Antigone [which the Wilma produced in 2013 and 2015, respectively] and he suggested that I read her work. And it was sitting on my desk when I started to work on HotHouse.
One of the reasons for HotHouse was to bring people of different histories and experiences together, and to work as a community, as people who care for each other and create together even though our experiences are very different. So I was thinking that I couldn’t find text that I could work on, because so much of the texts nowadays are written out of identity.
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