Gdzie był teatr narodowy w II Rzeczypospolitej?
Where Was the National Theatre in the Second Republic?

Summary/Abstract: The question posed in the title refers to the title of the Second Congress of Polskie Towarzystwo Badań Teatralnych (the Polish Society for Theatre Research) held in Bydgoszcz in September 2015: “Gdzie jest teatr?” (‘Where Is Theatre?’) The participants of the Congress discussed such issues as the place of contemporary theatre in society and in the sphere of public life, the major goals of today’s theatre, its institutional and organisational forms. The author transposes these questions by positing them in reference to the national theatre, understood both as a general idea and as the public institution of the Narodowy Theatre revived in 1924. The author recounts programmatic debates on these issues that went on in the press of the interwar period and then gives a critical appraisal of the artistic attempts to put the theories into practice. The Narodowy Theatre failed to develop its own production style and could not find an appropriate stage form for the great Romantic canon; the only promise on which it managed to deliver was the high quality of acting, the fact driven home especially when it came to playing Fredro. The idea of national theatre, however, found its embodiments on the stages of other theatres, e.g. at the Bogusławski and Reduta in Warsaw, in the Lvov of the 1930s, in Cracow or in Vilnius. Finally, the author considers whether it is possible to ask again today, where the national theatre is (or should be).

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