Jak opowiedzieć, jak grać tę historię?
How to Tell, How to Play This History?

Author(s): Ewa Wąchocka
Subject(s): Theatre, Dance, Performing Arts
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: self-referentiality; authorial self-consciousness; metatheatre; mise en abyme; dramatic “language”;
Summary/Abstract: In contemporary work for theatre; different forms of mise en abyme became an important tool for redefining the identity of drama in the altered social and political situation. The turn towards new themes which occurred towards the end of the first decade of the present century – political; historical; revisory; biographical – is connected with a manifestation of a different approach to writing; and – as a result – a development of new forms of expression (dramatic adaptations; collages; remixes and paraphrases; recycling and travesty). Different means and tropes of metatheatre serve the validation of authorial narrative strategies; world-view and aesthetic preferences. With reference to Daniel Heller-Roazen’s concept of “forgotten language;” the article analyses typical authorial interpretations of the situation in which drama’s “language” finds itself – rejected and still essential; severely weakened and found in modernized or mocking uses; amazingly lively in parodies and pastiches. I present several fundamental strategies for revealing the author’s self-consciousness; whose subject is; on the one hand; the way of telling “history” (L. Amejko; B.M. Bukowski; A. Pałyga; Z. Rudzka; M. Sikorska-Miszczuk); and on the other; the project of stage realization of the text; and thus also theatrical communication; building a close relation with the audience (P. Demirski; M. Pakuła). Self-reflexivity is an opportunity for strengthening the stage message; and these strategies also indicate the search for such forms which could endow today’s omnipresent and commonplace metatheatre with a significantly self-reflexive character.

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