Comic from Poland Sells Out Copernicus

by CYRYL JAKUBOWSKI
      If Poland had its version of Hollywood, then the Northwest Side Polish community had a chance to see one of its biggest stars recently.
      Popular Polish actor and comic Cezary Pazura performed on Nov. 14 at the Copernicus Cultural and Civic Center and reflected on his fame, the differences between American and Polish humor, and his opposition to political correctness.
      Nearly every seat in the 1,900-seat theater in the center, 5216 W. Lawrence Ave., was filled as Pazura joined the Polish sketch comedy group Ani Mru Mru, or “Don’t Say a Word,” to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the group, which performed a mix of abstract sketches.
      The appearances highlighted the Copernicus Center’s practice of featuring headline groups from Poland and other European countries.
      Pazura, age 47, has performed in some 55 films dating back to the late 1980s, and he has received many acting awards since the 1990s. He is a staple of Polish cinema, television sitcoms, theater and cabaret, and he has been performing stand-up comedy for the past 12 years. He also is a dramatic actor.
      “The audience here at the Copernicus Center is fantastic,” Pazura said in Polish. He said that it is not only in Chicago, which has the largest Polish population in the United States, that people anticipate his shows.
      “Right now in Polonia, whether it’s in Chicago or in Ireland or New York, people wait for Polish artists to come and are not like people in Warsaw, who go when it’s convenient for them,” Pazura said. “Here, if you have a poster or a date is set, then people know that the performers are not coming for a long time.”
      While Pazura has an image as a wild man on stage, he is soft-spoken and intelligent away from the stage.
      “What is fame? Fame is something actors in Hollywood know about,” Pazura said. “Our fame is the way it is. We are known in our country and sometimes it’s better that way . . . There’s always good in bad, that someone is known only in Poland because he can go wherever and still have peace of mind without someone bothering them.”
      Pazura said that he has been coming to perform at the Copernicus Center for more than 10 years and that he enjoys his brief stays in the Chicago. He said that people come up to him and ask for autographs and quote his movies.
      However, he said even he can’t remember some of his film lines because he is involved in too many new things and that the nature of an actor is to constantly reinvent himself.
      “That’s a very hard aspect of this work because as we all know some careers burn out and artists burn out,” Pazura said. “There are artists who sing to the same tune, there are artists who work in one type of films and there are artists who are slaves to their one-hit wonders and never go anywhere after that.”
      While some view him as the Polish Jim Carrey because of his physical comedy, he thinks Carrey is the best at what he does. “I like Jim Carrey because his comedy is physical and he knows how to pantomime,” he said. “Plus he is a very intelligent man.
      “But if I had to introduce myself to an American audience, I would have to say that there is no place in the world, maybe a little in Poland, where actors must be able to do everything. Sometimes Americans ask me who I am and what do I do, and when I tell them that I’m an actor, they ask what kind of an actor, film or theater?
      “And I tell them that I’m in film, theater, stand-up comedy, I provide voice work for animated movies, etc., and they don’t understand. For us that’s an everyday thing because an actor must be able to do everything. It’s a necessity in Poland or in Russia that an actor must be able to play both in films and in theater and in other things.”
      Pazura said that he would never do off-color comedy. “I’m a big opponent when it comes to young comedians in a cabaret resorting to cursing on stage to get a laugh,” he said.
“I differentiate between a cackle and laughter because the two are different things. I don’t want to make the audience cackle, I want to make them laugh. Laughter is a reaction to abstract concepts in the mind and the comedian has to bring out those concepts using either himself or through words.”
      During the stand-up portion of the show, Pazura also spoke out against political correctness. “The thing that spilled out from America to all over the world is unfortunately political correctness,” he said. “President Obama after Fort Hood had to say that a friend killed a friend and couldn’t say that it was a Muslim, for example. It’s stuff like that and I don’t understand it at all because it backfires against us. It shouldn’t be like that.”
      Pazura also said that the jokes he performs are created with the Polish audience in mind and that sometimes humor can’t be translated into other languages.
      “Language is very specific,” he said. “When I watch Russian movies because I know the language very well and I hear Polish people trying to translate them, it’s just not the same thing. This specificity can’t be duplicated.”

(Editor's note: While Pazura can speak some English, this interview was conducted in Polish and translated verbatim into English.)