STAR TALK: Anna Dymna
Lena: In 2003 you have started a foundation Mimo Wszystko whose aim is the help the handicapped. Where did the idea come from?
Anna: There is no simple answer here. It’s a bit complicated. I’m not a type of a business woman. I don’t like to give orders to people, I’d rather befriend them. That’s why I became an actress, because in order to act, one must understand the character one’s playing. What’s more, I’m a public person and I’ve been receiving hundreds of letters. So I know pretty well how lonely and helpless people may be. It is hard just to walk by them. My foundation was not a premeditated idea, but a reaction, a result of a coincidence. A few years ago father Isakowicz-Zaleski, the president of Father Albert Foundation gave me a call. He invited me to his shelter for Mentally Handicapped in Radwanowice to join the jury in a music-theatre festival. I was afraid of this meeting. I never met such people before and knew very little of them. It was a bit of a different planet for me full of strange, yet unusual beings. After a few minutes, though, all the barriers were gone and I felt needed and loved. I started to look for reasons to go back there, for a walk, for a mass. We live in such times that people isolate themselves from others, build walls, and the handicapped attract me with their innocence and openness. I started to run therapeutic workshops for them. Then there was the medal of Brother Albert which embarrassed me tremendously, because it made me think I hadn’t really done so much. Motivated, I organized a festival Albertiana. This year we’re having the tenth edition. And that’s how it started. Then there was the European Year of the Handicapped. Nina Terentiew, knowing I wasn’t afraid of contact with the handicapped, offered me to run a program “Let’s meet”. I talk with the sick, handicapped and the suffering…the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life. The phone-calls started: “I have 30 thousand zlotych and I’d like to give you the money, because you’ll know whom to help.” I answered: “This must be some mistake. I am a private person and I can’t accept money.” –“So start a foundation!” I never thought of it. Only in the year 2003 when the statute was changed and it turned out that my handicapped Friends lost the right to the therapeutic workshops, I couldn’t leave it that way. Father Zaleski shouted at me: Do something! –But what? -Start a foundation and workshops. So I did, there was no other option.
I have been running the foundation in a clear, simple and transparent way. A bit like a baby, so that everyone can understand what it’s about and so that there would be no doubts about honesty in our actions. When someone gives me a dollar, I tell him how it’s going to be spent and the one who got it thanks the one who gave it. 6 years of running this show has taught me many wonderful and bad things about the world and the people!
L: What brings you joy in life?
A: Life itself! That I wake up, that I AM, I am a naturally joyful person! Every morning, together with my cats I watch my private channel NATURE. I observe tits, blackbirds, jays and magpies and it puts me in the good mood for the whole day. This cable is pretty expensive, because the birds are insatiable…a friendly blackbird devours half an apple for breakfast, and during the day a kilo of sunflower seeds and a few pork lads disappear. But it’s worth it. Nobody scares me in this channel nor discourages me to live. I am happy with the volunteers, good people who do something for others, simply out of sheer kindness of their hearts. I’m glad that we can create such apolitical space in which we look in the same direction and walk towards the same goal.
L: It’s hard to even list everything you do. Where do you take the energy from?
A: I have no energy, but the joy is what carries me on. I run the foundation then I rest on the stage, if I get tired there I go to my students. In one space I get the energy needed for the other.
L: If you had the power to change the consciousness of the Poles, let’s say, such a magic wand, what would it be?
A: I’d like all of us to treat one another equally, not to be afraid and to trust one another more. I’d like us not to condemn so easily, not to judge so harshly…try to understand more. Let’s not be afraid of differences. Let’s stop complaining, spitting and let’s smile to each other…I could go on. I’m learning it myself, this humility and self-composure…and first of all, to turn the other cheek when someone wrongs me…otherwise hatred becomes stronger and spreads to everyone. It’s better to help one another and do something together.
L: What do you dream of? What would you like to achieve?
A: I dream of longer days with more hours, I dream that my handicapped friends smile everyday and are happy, that we are healthy…then we will manage somehow.
