Jak robić teatr robotniczy? Brygada szlifierza Karhana w Teatrze Nowym (1949)
How to Make a Workers’ Theater? Karhan’s Glazier Brigade at the Nowy Theater (1949)

Summary/Abstract: Dorota Sosnowska analyzes the reception of the play Karhan’s Glazier Brigade, which Kazimierz Dejmek directed in 1949 at Łódź’s Nowy Theater, based on a drama by Vaška Káni. Sosnowska analyzes the staging in the context of the transformations of the worker’s identity in the postwar period: the communist authorities effectively weakened it, introducing hierarchy and competition, against which laborers in Łódź factories (among others) protested. She forwards the thesis that while, according to the critics, the play appeared to be Socialist Realist, for the workers it had a social-performative dimension: it allowed them to experience a community and refresh their memories of their recent protests.

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