Krystian Lupa: The Double and Utopia

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Notes

This article is an edited and cut version with an added biography of the title chapter of Grzegorz Niziołek's monograph Sobowtór i utopia: Teatr Krystiana Lupy (The Double and Utopia: The Theatre of Krystian Lupa) (Kraków: Universitas, 1997).

‘Witkacy represents the model of an artist which is dear to Lupa, who searches for the means of expression in different forms of art (dramaturgy, theatre, novel-writing, painting, drawing), and who treats the act of expression itself as a kind of total act, which engages the subconscious and the most private experiences of the artist.’ Niziołek, Sobowtór i utopia, p. 19.

‘This is currently the most important theatre and intellectual phenomenon in Poland, which possesses its own clearly defined space, establishes its own idiom and sets itself apart from our impossibly cluttered field of art and thought.’ Tadeusz Nyczek, Tygodnik Powszechny, 11 (1990).

‘If I can speak of my master, it would clearly be Jung. He is the thinker who has made the most sense to me […] Jung is a twentieth century gnostic. He is also a master of the way, not only a master of truth, but a master of the way to the truth.’ Krystian Lupa, ‘Prawda zbła¸kania’ (‘The Truth of Going Astray’), interviewer: Grzegorz Niziołek, Notatnik Teatralny, 6 (1993), 122.

‘He is fifty, we have never seen any of his performances in France before, but without doubt he is one of the most remarkable directors at the end of the century. […] He has not only managed to find a subtle way of translating literature into theatre, but he also directs his actors with a faultless shrewdness and is able to reinvent time, space and sound.’ Fabienne Pascaud, Télérama (2 December 1998).

Krystian Lupa, Utopia i jej mieszkańcy (Utopia and Its Inhabitants) (Kraków: Baran i Suszczyński, 1993), p. 46.

Krystian Lupa, ‘Teatr to wzmożone istnienie’ (‘Theatre is an Intensified Existence’) in conversation with Elżbieta Morawiec, Tygodnik Solidarność, 17 (1992).

Krystian Lupa, ‘Kim jest bohater?’ (‘Who Is the Hero?’), in Krystian Lupa, Utopia i jej mieszkańcy, (Kraków: Baran i Suszczyński, 1993), p. 88.