BEATA POZNIAK-Peripatetic Pole
"I come from a country that promoted experimental and traditional drama
technique, but censored creative freedom," says Beata Pozniak.
It's to
difficult to imagine anything short of a full-blown police state stopping this
multifaceted stunningly beautiful native of Gdansk from accomplishing whatever she chooses
in the arts. A classically trained painter sculptor and dancer with an MFA from the Film
TV and Theater University in Lodz, Beata learned her acting craft according to the gospel
of Stanislaws
ki and Boleslawski going on to star in many Polish stage film and television
productions as well as an unprecedented two-year Warsaw run of Alan Ayckbourn's "How
The Other Half Loves." But it was her attraction to experimental theater inspired by
the "collaborators of Grotowski" that eventually led her to Los Angeles in
search of that elusive crealive freedom. Upon her arrival she promptly founded Theater
Discordia an iconoclastic performance group dedicated lo "rediscovering the
archetypes " using poetry, dreams, fairytales humor, music and dance to disrupt and
challenge the audience's intellectual conventions at every turn. Between Discordia
performances Beata has once again turned her attention to film, recently returning to her
homeland to star in noted Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski's "Thirty Door Key"
then coming back to play Marina Oswald in Oliver Stone's JFK. As for the artistic freedom
once denied her in Poland - has she found it here? "I'd rather not say" she
answers with an ironic little laugh. The smart money says that if she doesn't find it
she'll certainly find a way to create it.
The Book, March 1997, by Douglas Graham