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Národní divadlo jako symbolické centrum paměti

Author(s): Kamil Činátl / Language(s): Czech Publication Year: 0

The study uses methodology “cultural memory studies” to feature the National Theater as a place of memory. It focuses on the building as a symbol and attempts to describe the way, in which the symbolic architecture represents the past and enters the memory praxis of the nation (decoration of the theater, canonical repertoire, festivities, collections and so-called theater trains as actions of national participation). The author adds a dynamic extent of remembrance to a traditional approach – place of memory as a depository of representations of history. He contemplates the National Theater as an “empty place” – a framework of a specific social and cultural context to deliver substance of the past. The study analyses the process of the National Theater constitution as a place of memory – especially in the connection with the 1881 fire. This “national tragedy” symbolized one of the most powerful experiences of the modern Czech nation, that as a strong shared affection reflected itself in the process of constitution of the national identity. In this instance the study utilizes theme of trauma used by Aleida Assmann in the frame of the memory studies. The study uses a few cases to demonstrate memory praxis closely linked to a symbolic space of the National Theater (production of the Čapek’s theater play the White Disease (Bílá nemoc) in 1937, role of the theater during political changes in 1989).

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Uścisk Szekspira

Author(s): Anna Cetera-Włodarczyk / Language(s): English,Polish Publication Year: 0

A collection of essays dedicated to the memory of a renowned Shakespeare scholar Andrzej Żurowski (1944–2013). The book is devoted to the interpretation and reception of Shakespeare’s works in Polish theatre and abroad, to theatrical practices and various dramatic devices, to translations and comparative studies, as well as to polemics and Shakespearean inspirations in broadly defined culture: in music, iconography, and translation. A diverse study of the phenomenon of the contemporary and global Shakespeare.

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Biogram i bibliografia prac Andrzeja Żurowskiego

Author(s): Jolanta Betkowska / Language(s): English,Polish Publication Year: 0

A collection of essays dedicated to the memory of a renowned Shakespeare scholar Andrzej Żurowski (1944–2013). The book is devoted to the interpretation and reception of Shakespeare’s works in Polish theatre and abroad, to theatrical practices and various dramatic devices, to translations and comparative studies, as well as to polemics and Shakespearean inspirations in broadly defined culture: in music, iconography, and translation. A diverse study of the phenomenon of the contemporary and global Shakespeare.

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Szekspir w teatrze Stanisława Koźmiana, Kraków: 1865-1885

Author(s): Marta Gibińska / Language(s): English,Polish Publication Year: 0

Koźmian, director of Cracow’s City Theatre in the years 1865–1885 and a theatre reviewer, created a well-organized theatrical enterprise with a distinct artistic profile and well-balanced repertoire in which the best Polish plays were shown together with the canonical French, German and Russian classics. Shakespeare loomed large in the Theatre’s repertoire because for Koźmian his plays were the top achievement of European drama. The paper examines Koźmian’s ideas about drama, theatre and acting; his emphasis on both Polish and European plays in the repertoire results from the ambition to change the provincial stage into a national one, influencing and stimulating intellectual and artistic life in the then partitioned country. In this context the gradual introduction of Shakespeare’s plays (or rather their adaptations) in new translations is shown as a process of appropriating them as part and parcel of Polish culture.

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Bolesław Prus podziwia Helenę Modrzejewską

Author(s): Józef Bachórz / Language(s): English,Polish Publication Year: 0

Bolesław Prus took a lively interest in Polish theatre, which he followed out of a sense of journalistic duty (throughout his life Prus earned most of his income through journalism). He took careful note of major events in Poland’s cultural life, notably those taking place in the Russian-occupied Kingdom of Poland, where the theatres were licensed to produce plays in Polish. Prus did not put a lot of a weight on theatre, which he never saw as fundamental to the nation’s life (he was similarly unimpressed by the other arts, including, perhaps a touch surprisingly, literature), and tended to focus instead on those areas which he saw as more fundamental to the well-being of society, such as education, science, economic development or relationships between social classes. Having said that, Prus enjoyed his theatre, and he paid attention to productions taking place in Warsaw. Notable among his numerous columns on the problems, events and personalities of Warsaw’s theatre are those which focus on the actress Helena Modrzejewska. Many of his columns written in 1882 and 1885 pay considerable attention to the actress. Prus believed that Modrzejewska was one of the most eminent artists of the theatre in Poland and abroad, and he ranked her alongside the famous Sarah Bernhardt. He admired here xtraordinary talent and range of expression, noting how her professionalism was based on reliability and diligence. Prus never joined her critics who decried Modrzejewska’s decision to pursue a career in the United States and did not see her as being unpatriotic. He criticised instead the Polish version of the tall poppy syndrome whose poisonous brew of envy and backbiting encouraged the more enterprising individuals to leave the country for an international career.

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Hamlet i Hamlet 1914. Rekonesans

Author(s): Jan Michalik / Language(s): English,Polish Publication Year: 0

This article was inspired by a handwritten outline of the “screenplay” for a largely forgotten 1914 production of Hamlet in Kraków; drafted by Tadeusz Pawlikowski, widely regarded as the greatest director and theatre principal of late 19th- and early 20th-century Poland. The article opens with a description of the manuscript, a hitherto unknown document which preserves traces of the creative effort leading to the production’s premiere. The first section pieces together evidence from the manuscript with details gleaned from contemporary reviews to reconstruct the structure of the production (which involved over a dozen separate scenes), and the structure of the stage-space which used elements of a 1909 (1912) Max Rheinhard production at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. The second section of the article argues that the production was a turning point in the critical appreciation of Karol Adwentowicz’s performance as Hamlet, more than five years after the great modernist actor added the character to his repertoire. The article is intended as a sort of reconnaissance mission to encourage further scholarly attention to what was arguably one of the most interesting theatrical productions of Hamlet in Poland.

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Z szekspirowskiego archiwum reżysera

Author(s): Kazimierz Braun / Language(s): English,Polish Publication Year: 0

The essay presents Kazimierz Braun’s Shakespeare productions directed in the United States. It opens with recollections of productions of plays by Shakespeare in which Braun either acted (Twelfth Night, Poznań University, 1957) or which he directed. These included Romeo and Juliet (Teatr Polski, Warsaw 1963), Hamlet (Teatr im. J. Osterwy, Lublin 1968), Twelfth Night (Teatr Współczesny, Wrocław 1981), Hamlet (PWST Theatre Academy in Wrocław, 1984), and also Twelfth Night in Esslingen, West Germany (1984). In America, Braun first directed his own medley of love scenes from Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night (Swarthmore College, 1985). Next, he directed a series of the Bard’s plays at the Shakespeare in Delaware Park Festival in Buffalo, New York: Henry V (1987), Julius Caesar (1988), King Lear (1989), and As You Like It (1991). He also staged Richard III at the Kavinoky Theatre in Buffalo (1999), where he was responsible for directing and stage design. Directing Shakespeare in its original English and in an open air setting helped Braun discover what he calls new Shakespearean horizons: the blank verse which is “actional” and totally integrates the actor’s words and deeds, controlling the actor not unlike a horse bridle, and at the same time guiding the actor’s actions, energizing him/her and imposing a rhythm on speech and movement; and secondly, replicating in the open-air theatre the potentially three-dimensional space of Elizabethan theatre, allowing a smooth and expressive structuring of the action.

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Shakespeare, the Polish Director’s Contemporary

Author(s): Kathleen Cioffi / Language(s): English,Polish Publication Year: 0

“Shakespeare, the Polish Director’s Contemporary” considers two Polish productions of Shakespeare plays in the National Audiovisual Institute’s “Polish Contemporary Shakespeare” series. The author discusses the Polish tradition of “Shakespeare mania” and then analyzes Jan Klata’s production H. (an adaptation of Hamlet) and Krzysztof Warlikowski’s production Burza. Both directors apply Jan Kott’s idea that Shakespeare can be our contemporary to their productions, but they do so in different ways. The directors’ ability to achieve contemporaneity in their productions depends not only on stylistic directorial choices, but also on the changing nature of contemporary reality itself in the post-1989 era. Klata’s production seems to be almost an illustration of Kott’s discussion of Hamlet in Szkice o Szekspirze, yet at the same time, it has a curiously old-fashioned, Cold War–era feeling. H. enlists Shakespeare in the argument over European Union accession, an argument that was au courant in 2004 when the production was first staged but now seems dated. Warlikowski’s production appears less immediately contemporary in Kott’s sense than H., yet it illustrates Kott’s notion that Burza is “a passionate reckoning with the real world” as it was influenced by the controversy over Jedwabne, an issue that remains resonant to this day.

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Poznańska dyrekcja Janusza Wiśniewskiego albo Czas na klasyków

Author(s): Tomasz Milkowski / Language(s): English,Polish Publication Year: 0

Janusz Wiśniewski’s auteur theatre project was born in Poznań in the early 1980s, catalysed by the production of Balladyna by Juliusz Słowacki in Teatr Nowy and followed by several more productions of original plays (including Koniec Europy [The End of Europe]). From the outset, Wiśniewski’s project provoked extreme reactions, enthusiastic or otherwise, with Andrzej Żurowski acting as a major advocate. Following the collapse of communism in the early 1990s, Wiśniewski tried to start a theatre company in Warsaw. When the project foundered after two premieres, he spent several years in Germany before coming back to Poznań, first as a director in Teatr Nowy, and later as theatre principal in 2003–2011. Wiśniewski successfully combined the roles of director and auteur. His Teatr Nowy tackled a number of dramatic forms ranging from traditional dramatic theatre (Romeo and Juliet) to metaphysical comedy (Richard III) and visual narrative theatre (The Tempest). Notably, Wiśniewski explored Polish and world classics at the time. This basic outline attempts to recreate Janusz Wiśniewski’s years at the helm in Poznań, and looks at his auteur productions which enjoyed good critical reception in Europe.

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Czarne lustra: Opowieści afrykańskie Krzysztofa Warlikowskiego

Author(s): Elżbieta Baniewicz / Language(s): English,Polish Publication Year: 0

This article (Czarne lustra – Black Mirrors) attempts to discuss and describe Krzysztof Warlikowski’s production Opowieści afrykańskie według Szekspira [African Stories According to Shakespeare] with the actors of the Nowy Teatr in Warsaw in collaboration with several European theatres. Warlikowski and his dramaturge, Piotr Gruszczyński, use some of European culture’s archetypal themes and situations embedded by Shakespeare in King Lear, Othello and The Merchant of Venice, but they also spin off certain continuations inspired by the works of J.M. Coetzee, Eldrige Claver and Wajdi Mouawad in order to complement the familiar European themes and to throw them into sharp relief against interpretations of other cultures. The Lebanese writer W. Mouawad, the African-American writer E. Claver and the South African writer and Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee are able to raise questions from a non-European/African perspective with its experience of centuries-long humiliation and slavery. Europe and Africa have a long tradition of mutual questioning, and now that traditionally “white” countries have come to increasingly contain black and coloured populations, the resulting blend of cultures, races, religions and customs results in thorny issues and complex conflicts. Warlikowski’s production narrates this cultural intersection in time and space, taking a range of human perspectives to discuss issues such as solitude, sexuality, power and dominance.

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Hamlet and the Travelling Players

Author(s): Daniel Gerould / Language(s): English,Polish Publication Year: 0

This article discusses depictions of itinerant actors as a key to the innermost essence of theatrical art. In particular, it touches on productions of Hamlet and the experience of Eastern European theatre. In Hamlet, the wandering players perform several functions. Firstly, they reflect the political tensions of the day and the economic competition from children’s companies which Shakespeare was facing at the time. Secondly, they may be a reminiscence from Shakespeare’s own childhood, when similar itinerant companies visited Stratford. Thirdly, these scenes introduce the theme of theatre, even if the nature of Hamlet’s own stage experience remains open. It should be noted that historical attitudes to itinerant actors have not been stable. Initially very much an underclass occupation, the stigma was gradually replaced by a rhetoric of rebellion: a homeless actor turns into a dissenter, a poor but free vagabond, a pariah, a scapegoat, an occasional martyr. All these options are present in productions of Hamlet. The actors at Elsinore are chroniclers of the events, but also participants, even instigators of the events. Characteristically, Eastern European productions in countries marked by the experience of totalitarianism sometimes depict the actors as tragic figures, ensnared in political intrigue against their will, brutally abused and severely punished for naively siding with Prince Hamlet.

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The Face as a Stage: Roberto Bacci’s Hamlet

Author(s): Jerzy Limon / Language(s): English,Polish Publication Year: 0

This article touches upon theoretical issues of the theatre, and the basic source used to exemplify the thesis is Roberto Bacci’s Hamlet. In this production, the actors wear fencing masks and costumes, and when they uncover their faces, they become particular fictional figures. However, after they have played their role in a given scene, and put the masks back on, the meaning they carried evaporates or is reset. This means that when they uncover their face again, they can assume the role of someone else. The essay analyses the rules of the theatre that enable transformations of this kind.

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Hamlet spod znaku globalizacji

Author(s): Patrice Pavis / Language(s): English,Polish Publication Year: 0

Peter Brook’s 2000 Hamlet (filmed in 2001) is an example of a globalised production where great pains are taken to make sure that the diverse backgrounds of its international cast can gel homogeneously. The interpretation is a sort of net force far removed from a critical reengagement of the text. The production seems to be guided by the impulse to try and come up with a versatile production fit for viewing and appraisal in a wide range of contexts. Is this shortage of vision and interpretive ambition a sign of humility, or is it a symptom of slick directing which fails to rise to the task of achieving critical engagement with the text?

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Mirrored Image and the Dislocation of Culture in Ninagawa’s Shakespeare

Author(s): Manabu Noda / Language(s): English,Polish Publication Year: 0

Yukio Ninagawa (b. 1935) is one of the most internationally known Japanese theatre directors for his productions of Western classics. However, he often seems defensive about directing them. My essay tries to argue that his defensiveness can be interpreted as a form of self-imposed Orientalism which consigns the mind to the West, the body to the East. For instance, in his praise of Tatsumi Hijikata’s 1972 butō piece Shiki-no tameno Nijūichi-ban [Twenty-seven Nights for the Four Seasons], Ninagawa showed his strong sympathy with the way Hijikata mixed the intellect of the West with the physicality of the East. Hijikata’s dances were broadly regarded as an unsightly form of parading and grotesque physicality, but as Ninagawa saw it, Japan’s origins were in this dark deformity. The dark origins of the indigenously Japanese was to Hijikata what the archetypal populace is to Ninagawa. The volatility of the crowd which Ninagawa loves to stage reflects the ambivalent modernity of post-World War II Japan. Ninagawa looked back on some imagined past for the origin or archetype of their nationality which he hoped might serve as an alternative to the kind of modernity of their undeniably westernized country. My paper examines ambivalent modernity in the way Ninagawa stages Shakespeare and other plays as mirroring the populace of the post-World War II political milieu of Japan.

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Metafory i praktyki teatru

Author(s): Georges Banu / Language(s): English,Polish Publication Year: 0

The attempts at describing theatre inform all works of Shakespeare though he never offers a consistent and homogeneous declaration of principles. The article is a brief survey of the multiplicity of references to the theatre and various practices known by men of the stage such as Shakespeare himself along with the metaphorical, or even symbolic use of these theatrical patterns, stage sets, actors and manners of characterization. If for Shakespeare all the world’s a stage, it is reasonable to explore the distribution of patterns underneath the plentitude of theatrical allusions scattered over his whole work.

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“My dreams presage too true”: Dreams as a Dramatic Device in Elizabethan Drama

Author(s): Pavel Drábek / Language(s): English,Polish Publication Year: 0

Throughout the entire period of Elizabethan drama dreams were used as a powerful dramatic device. They served as a means of character development (an early type of psychology), popular metaphysics as well as techniques of drama construction. This paper discusses dreams and their role in several plays by Shakespeare, The First Part of the Contention (also known as King Henry VI, Part II), King Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, and in the apocryphal Arden of Faversham and Sir Thomas More. These plays – although not a full list of Elizabethan plays that have dreams in them – may be read and understood within a single context, historically, that of the years 1590–93, in which they were all written and performed. As the dramatic function of the dream is analogical in those plays, the group may be referred to as forming a subgenre of the Elizabethan dream play.

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Conflict and Rhetoric. On the Structuring of Roles in Conflict in Shakespeare’s (Non)dramatic Poetry

Author(s): Jacek Fabiszak / Language(s): English,Polish Publication Year: 0

It appears that conflict, so fundamental in drama and theatre, assumes a theatrical vest in Shakespeare’s dramatic and non-dramatic poetry. It does not matter what the nature of the conflict is: be it military, moral, ethic, etc. It does not matter either whether there are at least two conflicted characters, as the conflicted parties, especially in the case of poetry, can be contained within a single lyrical I. The key issue in the structuring of roles in conflict is of course the omnipresent rhetoric, which was an obligatory subject in the English Renaissance education system. For this reason, neither Shakespeare (who probably did go to King’s New School in Stratford) or his contemporaries (e.g. Christopher Marlowe) were well versed in it and purposefully or inadvertently employed it in their works, especially in the situation of VERBAL conflict when one party tried to argue with another. In such a conflict, characters, or their alter egos, posed as if they were actors on stage. The scrutiny centres on two examples of Shakespeare’s poetry: a sonnet (nondramatic verse) and a monologue from Macbeth (dramatic poetry). I will try to show how in each case, with the help of rhetorical rules, the speaker constructs his interlocutor in the process of solving a conflict.

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Shakespeare’s Unhistorical Inventions and Deviations from Holinshed, and Their Dramatic Functions in Richard II

Author(s): Yun-Cheol Kim / Language(s): English,Polish Publication Year: 0

Much of the dramaturgical genius of Shakespeare’s later master tragedies is already to be found in Richard II, especially in his treatment of the main source: Holinshed’s Chronicles. This essay aims to explore Shakespeare’s departures from Holinshed in terms of characters and structure, and to see how they function in the drama. Shakespeare has changed Holinshed’s self-seeking Gaunt into an aged patriot to emphasize Richard’s weaknesses as King. He has matured Queen Isabel from a historical seven-year-old child to a fully grown woman, and facilitated Richard’s journey into self-discovery. In the garden scene that Shakespeare has invented, he even lets her, as Richard’s proxy, eavesdrop on the gardener’s admonitions on royal governance, in which Richard has failed. Most importantly, in terms of structure, Shakespeare puts the deposition scene before a large assembly in Westminster Hall, unlike historic Richard whose resignation was tendered by letter in the Tower of London. This invention, or deviation, enhances Richard as a tragic hero who has finally achieved self-knowledge, reconciliation to his fate, and victory in defeat. Shakespeare’s inventions and deviations from Holinshed in Richard II have foreshadowed some dramaturgical principles of his later great tragedies and surely put the play into a drama of truly tragic stature.

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Hamlet jednorożec

Author(s): Jarosław Komorowski / Language(s): English,Polish Publication Year: 0

Shakespeare’s "The Tempest", "Julius Caesar" and "Timon of Athens" all contain references to the unicorn, a fabled beast whose existence was nevertheless taken seriously by some of the learned Elizabethans. The unicorn made its first appearance in European culture in the writings of classical Greeks and Romans, and it attained a symbolic significance early in the first millennium, as attested in "The Physiologus". The creature was believed to be too wild to capture unless a virgin was at hand to tame it, as the beast would approach her meekly and lay its head on her pure lap, where it became exposed to the hunters’ attack. By analogy to the Virgin Mary, who “captured” Jesus Christ for humanity, the unicorn became a symbol of the Saviour. Bestiaries paved the way for plentiful iconographic depictions of a unicorn with its head on a virgin’s lap in medieval paintings, carvings and sculptures, including strictly Christian versions of the Visitation featuring the unicorn where the Archangel Gabriel visits Mary as a hunter, with the animal symbolizing Christ climbing onto Mary’s lap. In "Hamlet", Shakespeare uses this popular theme in the Mousetrap Scene at a purely visual level, without actually naming the animal. In a stage transposition of the iconographic motif, the Prince of Denmark approaches Ophelia and lays his head on her lap following a brief exchange (“Lady, shall I lie in your lap?”) before "The Murder of Gonzago" can begin. In this way the play makes elegant use of the unicorn legend as the exchange links back to an earlier scene where Claudius and Polonius were trying to hunt Hamlet down using Ophelia as bait.

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„Z ciebie pewnie muzyk całą gębą…”

Author(s): Piotr Kamiński / Language(s): English,Polish Publication Year: 0

Greek mythology and Shakespeare are European culture’s two inexhaustible treasure houses. Although myth obviously dwarfs all other sources in its impact, the very fact that the output of a single poet can be mentioned in a single breath with the collective work of generations is a testament to Shakespeare’s influence on European musicians. Music pervaded every aspect of theatrical production in Shakespeare’s day, and we may only regret that Shakespeare never collaborated with the greatest composers of his time. The 17th-century musical embellishments of Shakespeare’s plays relied on adaptations instead of his original works, and the 18th century was very much a blank page: Shakespeare’s great music career began in the 19th century and continues to this day. The breakthrough came in 1827 with the premiere of "The Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture" by the 17-year-old Mendelssohn, and the visit of the Kemble company in Paris, which sparked a Shakespeare craze in a generation of French artists. Shakespeare themed operas continue to be written, and three masterpieces by Giuseppe Verdi ("Macbeth", "Otello" and "Falstaff") still vie for popularity with Shakespeare’s originals. Verdi’s success remains unmatched by other Shakespeare-themed operas, but there have been some excellent orchestral scores written for the theatre ("The Tempest by Sibelius", 1925) or for ballet (Prokofiev’s "Romeo and Juliet", 1935).

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