Remembering: R.H.J.
[ a tribute (hołd) in fragments]
(“At Playwrights’ Center, we grieve the devastating loss of”;
“stretching expectations of performance”;
“holding her sister Ingrid’s hand”;
“In lieu of flowers memorial contributions
to the Red Eye Theater in Minneapolis (https://redeyetheater.org/support)
or to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation
(https://www.bcrf.org/other-ways-give/)”;
“Although CAR T-cell therapies don’t work for everybody,
in some people”;
“We’ve acknowledged that multiplicity is a value that we share, that
collaboration takes longer”
*
jeszcze raz. Jendrzejewski, Rachel Halcyon. (Also: Rachelka.) Actor. Administrator. Alchemist. Anioł. A(pollonia)(n). Artist. Author. Bard. Bastille Day. Bio. Breast. Cancer. California. CAR-T cell therapy. Clinical. Clown. Communications Manager. Cornerstone. Daring. Delightful. Dionysian. encyclopedia. Experimental. Friend. Grantwriter. Heart. Hilarious. Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw cusp. Indiana. Indomitable. Instytut Adam Mickiewicza. Joy. (There is no K in Italian, but there are lots of Ks in Polish.) Listener. LOHH. Lover. MFA, Brown University. Multiplicity. Music. Non-linear. Organizer. PASSION. Playwright. Poet. Silence. Singer. Space on the page. “Stage Four Needs More.” SICKDEX. Supergroup. Surgical menopause. Sweat. Management, stage. MERONYMY. Metastatic. Minnesota. Narrative. Obituary. Patreon, defunct. Pan. Pisarka. Playwrights’ Center. Queer/Questioning. rachelka.com. Radiant. Red Eye. Rok Grotowskiego 2009. Star. Supergroup. Superlative. ten year project. TRACES. Tribute. Trickster. Unstoppable. Vivacious. Writer. Writer. Writer. Writer. Writer. WRITER. XXXOOOXXX. “yen-shzay-EF-skee.” Yearning. Youthful. Young. Zany. Zap. Zounds. Zawsze. Zaczynamy
Image the first, taken by Ivan Talijančić. During rehearsal for TRACES (after Sophie Calle) in Minneapolis. Rachel Jendrzejewski, as a stand-in for Dead Sophie Calle, rehearsing in a wedding dress, laughing on a phone call. The Dead Sophie figure would lie flat on a flatbed truck, surrounded by carnations, and drive under a skybridge, and the one audience member for the whole piece, standing in the Hewing Hotel’s skybridge, would see this figure, this beautiful figure—except, with eyes closed.
I will show that second image—the rehearsal version, in the hotel room at the Hewing—at the very end of this piece.
You don’t have to look at it.
*
Ivan Talijančić (Traces) powiedział:
Rachel and I were writing an email to each other at the same time
This telepathic moment
“Hey, where are you?
Might you be working on something right now where you would potentially be interested in collaborating with a playwright?”
*
Rachel’s notes on SICKDEX, a work in progress, for a 2024 Playwrights’ Center Fellows Showcase:
“…(post-call thought, does this subject matter need a content warning?)
Will write what wants to be shared and see if that reveals anything”
*
Jeden: to ja. I met Rachel Jendrzejewski, human and sunburst, in 2006 in Los Angeles. Newborn post-college theatre groupies, gnawing our baby artist teeth, working for the radically inclusive Cornerstone Theater ensemble. Listening, discovering: Bill Rauch on “best of both worlds” win-win solutions and Paula Donnelly on consensus and community engagement. Veteran artists making theatre, concrete and exhaust and tire treads, and us, awestruck 20-somethings typing, typing. Folding lap-computers and piles of files at Groundworks on Traction Avenue. Clickety-clacking and giggling while the street gets sweaty outside. Working all day and rehearsing our own projects at night.
We didn’t know what stopping was. We had no brake pedals.
*
A fragment from the beginning of SICKDEX:
*
Emily Gastineau (former Red Eye collaborator, Minneapolis) powiedziała: I asked her once how she conveyed that her texts were not meant to be approached as conventional plays, and she said, “Space on the page, for starters.” She always kept the form open, left room for other people to enter, and held space for things to change.
*
To ja, jeszcze raz. Mon semblable, ma soeur, my parallel satellite. Emails, communications, emails, grant-writing, emails, marketing, laughter. Co-led companies; wrote plays; traveled to Poland, land of our ancestors (yours Polish, mine Jewish) (first her, then me, at her kind invitation). Got MFAs. Licked gelato off our fingers in the Wrocław Rynek during Rok Grotowskiego 2009. Took Joanna Klass’s invitation to get hooked on Polish theatre and never stop coming back.
The post-Grotowski ensembles of Poland make theatre where process matters as much as the performance, and where there are no observers unless you are prepared to join in the chorus yourself. The artist is audience. The artist is audience. Rachel was always ready to shift the boundaries.
We orbited, we pivoted, we plunged, we stayed in the opposite of touch.
And if we never saw each other, but only heard of each other, it was fine, because there would always be another show, wouldn’t there? There would always be PASSION in L.A. and MEMORY LAWS in Warsaw and Minneapolis and TRACES in Minnie and everywhere and we would never run out of
*
Zoe Aja Moore (PASSION) powiedziała: Rachel and I met about eight years ago, when we were connected to develop a new performance project which became PASSION—an experience that responds to the silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc, and invites an intimate audience into an embodied rehearsal of perseverance. Rachel and I spent endless hours together surrounded by over 500 images from the film—each closeup on the actress’s face as she embodied the suffering and also the incredible strength of Joan. In rehearsals, Rachel—always hyper present and super attuned—developed a gorgeous and responsive text that wove together impressions from the movie, her own experience with cancer, and the necessary commitment to the long durational work to fight and persevere in the face of a changing body and climate change.
*
Maija García (Playwrights’ Center) powiedziała: She talked about her work like a child on the playground harboring precious jewels in her pocket, with an open invitation to the prospect of delight! Her eyes shone with ferocity and wit; lending full attention to new ideas—the more bizarre, the better!
Her piece [SICKDEX] reflected the voices in her head while going through chemo; human thoughts struggling for space in a world too cluttered for pause.
*
Emma Busch (TRACES) powiedziała: Rachel tended to float between the different locations the performance took place, but she often came to join us at the Hewing Hotel. Then an audience member would say something. Something that took our breath away, made us gasp, made us laugh, had us doing a double take. And in that moment, my eyes would whip up and find Rachel’s. Because we were the only two who had heard an audience member share their own experience of dying and being brought back to life. Without any words, Rachel and I would laugh together. The art was for the artist as much as for the audience. It was an experience that will forever shape how I make theatre.
*
Ivan Talijančić powiedział:
Because she was so transparent we were aware the illness was progressing—
But because she was so unfazed by it—
That’s what made her passing so shocking—
We were like, “NO!”
She’s just going to keep…
If there’s anybody who’s going to find a way, she’s going to find a way—
Then in that final treatment—
She felt so hopeful…
The reason why I’m saying all of this is also—like—I never really thought, during the entire time we were working together, that this would be our last project, that this would be her last project—we never, we were never working from that place…”
*
Emily Mendelsohn (theatre director) powiedziała: I think of the way she always came laden with small gifts and the handwritten notes of appreciation she wrote to every collaborator after every weekend.
I think of the time the power went out in the farmhouse when she was piloting an artist retreat in Maine and how we learned to draw water from a bucket in a well.
Or in one workshop where we felt in over our heads, we made the Cranberries’ song Dreams our anthem, and whenever we were particularly overwhelmed, took a mandatory dance break.
Her final entry for her 10-year project, a project of writing 10 words a day while taking a daily medication for 10 years, was “turns out for a while yet someone right there extra help.”
Rachel was that someone right there for so many.
She lived into a world where none of us were alone.
*
Jenny LeDoux (MEMORY LAWS, Playwrights’ Center) powiedziała: I got to see a beautiful, thoughtful, deeply innovative writer at work. Rachel was kind, bright-eyed, and so full of gentle joy, and I was constantly struck by her work as a writer and her ability to pen words. What a light this world has lost. I am so grateful we got to cross paths for the time that we did.
*
To ja, jeszcze raz. Some numbers: (14) Of July, the day of your death; of May, the day of your birth; of sonnets, the number of lines (“No longer mourn for me when I am dead”); of the human skull, the number of bones in the face; (19) The number of years we knew each other; (sto tysięcy) the number of unfinished works you left behind you; the number of things we wish we had said to you; the number of ways in which [TĘSKNIĘ ZA TOBĄ]; (nieskończony, bezgraniczny) our love for you; the ways you showed us that your love for us was also infinite; what you felt when your own cells were turned to Krzyżacki; what you felt understudying Dead Sophie Calle in TRACES, wrapped in a wedding dress, riding on your back under the Hewing Hotel skybridge in Minneapolis, laid out like a slab on a flatbed truck, playing dead, playing playing dead, surrounded by carnations; the number of times we will speak of you and fail to
*
“Affirming.” “Beautiful.” “Bright-eyed.” “Brilliant.” “Glowing.” “Gentle.” “Kind.” “Light.” “Inspiring.” “Tender.” “Thoughtful.” “Precise.” “Radiant.” “Strong.”
*
Emily Gastineau powiedziała: The time I asked her to bring her cat to a rehearsal where we were staging surprises, how she would be the person to bring flowers and cards and chocolate for the cast, taking so many photos she jokingly referred to herself as the paparazzi, how she always offered me a ride home so we could debrief the meeting, how she was humble about it but could really sing, the time she did a cameo as Hillary Clinton in a performance by Marcela Michelle, how she cared for the archives from the former Red Eye and made sure the neon sign from the first space in the 80s was restored, how she’d send the longest text messages with paragraph breaks, the repeated circular gesture she’d make with her hands to show her thoughts were in process…”
*
Jared Ziegler (Traces, Playwrights’ Center) powiedział: Rachel had a way of extending invitations that warmed and welcomed the recipient, encouraging us to see ourselves expansively. Rachel held all of my questions, curiosities, and concerns with utmost sincerity. She flung herself boldly into the shit when we needed to pivot, and if a collaborator was out sick for the day, Rachel was always willing to step in and support the rest of the ensemble by carrying that role for that day’s performances.
*
Ivan Talijančić powiedział: Trying to coordinate three rotating casts. People got sick, had Covid, we had a performer who got injured and could not continue…
Every crisis, Rachel dealt with with the same effortlessness that I had experienced in the two of us working together—completely unflappable.
[Rachel:] “Okay, so Ivan, you’re going to perform that part.”I guess I’m going to be the PI today!
[R:] “Oh, okay, this terrible thing happened, you’re doing this now, right, Ivan?”(I performed a number of times…Rachel performed in the piece as well…)
[R:] “Get into costume, you’re performing today.”And you go, “Oh, that’s what I’m doing…Okay, let’s go!”
Which makes things much more efficient and actually less stressful, when you are facing a crisis with a sort of calmness…the overarching feeling is—
“We got this!”
When you have an audience member who becomes a dialogue partner—structured improv—
You have to be quick on your feet and respond
—you’re IN!
*
Dorothy Jolly (TRACES) powiedziała: We thought it would be cool to have a little tea party at my apartment and invite Rachel since she lived a short walk away. She did not feel well enough to leave her apartment, but she insisted on contributing to our snacks! She sent a beautiful set of cheeses, jams, and crackers. After tea, we packed a box of everything and went together to deliver it to her door.”
(Rachel was asleep when they got there but they walked around the neighborhood, and when they got back their voices under her window came to her. She woke, and they laughed together. )
*
Ivan Talijančić powiedział: There were obviously like several periods of time working on this piece where things got super crazy and overwhelming, and both I and other people in Rachel’s circle were like, “You know, maybe…maybe delegate…let’s see if we can find a way to just give you more time.” We worried because we loved her, because we love her still. She actually said “No, no,” and this is a quote: “Working on this project is life-giving…”
*
More SICKDEX:
Emily Gastineau powiedziała: At one point she said she was visualizing the cancer as a wild animal that she was ushering firmly out. Particularly the first time she had cancer she referred to it as her “health project” and one of the drugs was the “magic potion.”
On her last day she said that she was “celebrating a more intensive rest.”
*
To ja, jeszcze raz. It is 2009, it is Rok Grotowskiego, summer in Poland, it smells like midnight, we have watched two plays tonight and we have one more to go.
Wobbly outdoor tables, under an old tree in the stone courtyard of the White Stork Synagogue in Wrocław, with white cups of puddingy hot chocolate so thick you have to eat it with a spoon,
foot-high glasses of beer with raspberry syrup,
and the faces in the leaves, the wind over the stones,
the jacket pockets
lost wallets
*
Emily Gastineau powiedziała: In December 2019. This was after she recovered from cancer the first time, and before the second diagnosis, so she was just beginning to reckon with cancer as material in her work. The studio was dark and she was seated behind a small desk, with a laptop hooked up to a projector that showed her typing live. The sense of liveness in the room was palpable. I could feel the keystrokes, the body and time were so present, and everyone was holding their breath.
*
Image the second (content warning, trigger warning, death warning)
of Rachel in process for TRACES, rehearsing Sophie Calle’s bride-in-carnations death pose in a hotel room in Minneapolis; with eyes closed, unbearable. Don’t scroll down unless you’re ready to see her rehearsing for what happened.
Remember, I told you: The Dead Sophie figure would lie flat on a flatbed truck, surrounded by carnations, and drive under a skybridge, and the one audience member for the whole piece, standing in the Hewing Hotel’s skybridge, would see this figure, this beautiful figure—
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[here it is]***
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Rachel Jendrzejewski (1982-2025) powiedziała, in the voice of Sophie Calle, at the end of TRACES:
There is a point where we go
to another place that is not here.
By ourselves.
And so I’ve been planning my own passage,
down to each little detail…
What to wear. What and who to have around me.
What to hold. What to release.
Dara Weinberg is a writer, lyricist/librettist, and teacher/director who lives in Los Angeles.
