A History of Polish Theatre

Description

Poland is celebrated internationally for its rich and varied performance traditions and theatre histories. This groundbreaking volume is the first in English to engage with these topics across an ambitious scope, incorporating Staropolska, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Enlightenment and Romanticism within its broad ambit. The book also discusses theatre cultures under socialism, the emergence of canonical practitioners and training methods, the development of dramaturgical forms and stage aesthetics and the political transformations attending the ends of the First and Second World Wars. Subjects of far-reaching transnational attention such as Jerzy Grotowski and Tadeusz Kantor are contextualised alongside theatre makers and practices that have gone largely unrecognized by international readers, while the participation of ethnic minorities in the production of national culture is given fresh attention. The essays in this collection theorise broad historical trends, movements, and case studies that extend the discursive limits of Polish national and cultural identity.

Katarzyna Fazan is Professor in the Theatre and Drama Department at Jagiellonian University and in the State Academy of Theatre Arts in Krakow. She is Editor-in-Chief of the series Teatr/Konstelacje. Her book publications include Projekty intymnego teatru smierci. Wyspianski-Lesmian-Kantor (2009), Kantor. Nie/Obecnosc (2019); and with Anna R. Burzynska and Marta Brys, Dzis Tadeusz Kantor! Metamorfozy smierci, pamieci i obecnosci/Tadeusz Kantor Today: Metamorphoses of Death, Memory and Presence (2014). Michal Kobialka is Professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Minnesota. He has published over 100 articles, essays, and reviews. His book publications include Further on, Nothing: Tadeusz Kantor's Theatre (2009), Theatre/Performance Historiography: Time, Space, Matter (2015), co-edited with Rosemarie Bank, and Tadeusz Kantor's Memory: Other Pasts, Other Futures (2018), co-edited with Natalia Zarzecka. Bryce Lease is Reader in Theatre & Performance Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London and Co-Editor of Contemporary Theatre Review. His publications include After '89: Polish Theatre & the Political (2016) and, as editor, Contemporary European Playwrights (2020). He is Principal Investigator for the AHRC-funded project 'Staging Difficult Pasts: Of Objects, Narratives and Public Memory' (http://stagingdifficultpasts.org).