Theatre in Poland - Venues

Venues

The theatrical map of Poland, on which for many years the most important points were Warsaw and Kraków, has undergone numerous changes over the last decade. The most recognized directors in Poland, such as Krzysztof Warlikowski, Grzegorz Jarzyna, Jan Klata, Michal Zadara or Maja Kleczewska work in Warsaw, but also travel to other cities. While it is true to say that the capital's position is safe, there is strong competition for second place between Kraków and Wrocław. Recognised masters (Jerzy Jarocki, Krystian Lupa) and a group of younger directors, with Piotr Cieplak and Paweł Miśkiewicz at the head, collaborate with Wrocław's theatres. Poznań, Gdańsk, and Łódź have similar ambitions. One of the more unanticipated surprises of recent seasons has been the blossoming of theatre in Legnica, a town which, until recent times, was the main Soviet military base in Poland, where the Artistic Director, Jacek Głomb, has been actively searching for new ways to reach the town's inhabitants. So he began putting on shows relating events in the lives of the local citizens, as well as siting classical dramas in surprising arenas (e.g., Shakespeare's Coriolanus in an old Prussian barracks). Since Pawel Lysak became the Artistic Director of the theatre in Bydgoszcz, this city in central Poland has been able to enjoy top-level theatre as well.

There is no doubt that the greatest achievements of the 20th century Polish theatre are thanks to those artists seeking new forms and functions for the theatrical arts. From the very beginning of the great European reform movement, Polish theatre people have undertaken courageous experiments in this area. The Polish stream of reform was characterised by the linking of theatre with metaphysics. The source of this type of search was the work and thinking of the Polish Romantics, with Adam Mickiewicz at the forefront. In his Forefathers' Eve, the most important work in Polish literature, there is a vision of theatre as phenomenon on the border between a show and a ceremony led by an actor. In succeeding years, the most important artists of the Polish stage referred to, and sometimes polemicized with, this vision, developing or modifying it.

It was from this root that Stanisław Wyspiański's art arose. Poet, painter, visionary, working at the beginning of the twentieth century he influenced the development of theatre over the course of the following century. His works, born of Romantic and symbolic inspiration, conjoining Catholic, pagan, and classic traditions with the existential and political problems of the new century, has not been completely discovered and understood to this day, forming a vivid and fascinating heritage. It was to this tradition that the originators of Polish monumental theatre, Leon Schiller (Edward Gordon Craig's collaborator), Juliusz Osterwa, and Wilam Horzyca, harked back. Tadeusz Kantor, the avant-garde visual artist who became interested in theatre while trying to find new forms of expression, also alluded to it in his theatrical searches. After years of investigation (attempts to adapt the rules of Tachism and performance art to the needs of the theatre), Kantor created his own model, called the Theatre of Death. In his most famous productions - The Dead Class, Wielopole, Wielopole or I Shall Never Return - the artist presented a kind of spiritualist séance, calling pictures, words and sounds deformed by the passing of time. Referring to his memories and experiences, he portrayed a collective memory of the end of the tragic twentieth century - the century of the Holocaust.