Leon Schiller’s Theatrical Adaptation of Victory in Lwów
Leon Schiller’s Theatrical Adaptation of Victory in Lwów

Summary/Abstract: Although Joseph Conrad’s dramatic work is rather limited, he is a writer whose fiction is frequently imbued with theatricality and dramatic irony. He wrote three plays altogether: the one-act One Day More (1905), the two-act Laughing Anne (1922) and a full-length play, The Secret Agent (1922). However, there are also novels of great dramatic potential, for example, Victory or Under Western Eyes, which proved most popular for adaptation. The present paper aims to show how Victory’s dramatic potential was creatively transformed into a theatrical performance by Leon Schiller (1887-1954). Schiller was one the most prominent and influential Polish theatre directors as well as theatre pedagogue and activist, composer, singer, translator, and scriptwriter. He studied philosophy at the Jagiellonian University, next he went to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. When he returned to Poland, he became a theatre critic showing himself an expert on the European theatre. He was employed as artistic director of Teatry Miejskie in Lwów [the Lviv City Theatres] and introduced and developed the idea of monumental theatre that he borrowed from Edward Craig. Victory was chosen by Schiller as the spectacle to inaugurate his new theatrical season in Lviv in 1930.

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