W laboratorium Fausta
In Faust’s Laboratory

Summary/Abstract: Access to the extensive archives of Jan Dorman has allowed us to see the long-term presence of the Faust theme in Dorman’s theatrical explorations and to study and describe his last production: Walpurgis Night based on Goethe’s Faust (The Animation Theater in Jelenia Góra, 1986), for the first time. The paper is an attempt to reconstruct this production on the basis of manuscripts and typescripts collected by the director in his archive and the reminiscences of people working in the theatre. The archives create an intriguing afterimage of Walprugis Night as a production with an autobiographical dimension, marked by Dorman’s legend and fascination with his methods of work, an aura of mysticism surrounding the production and the director’s sudden death, less than a month after the premiere. Having extracted Dorman’s Walpurgis Night from the archive warehouse we can add another leaf to the history of the reception of Faust in Polish theatre of the second half of the 20th century.

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