New (and Not-So-New) Alternatives

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Notes

Magadalena Gołaczyńska, ‘The Alternative Theatre in Poland since 1989’, trans. Marcin Wąsiel, New Theatre Quarterly, 17 (2001), 186–194 (p. 186).

Tadeusz Nyczek, ‘Alternatywny’ (‘Alternative’), Teatr, 56:4 (2001), 55–61 (p. 61). Nyczek's position is disputed by Lech Śliwonik in ‘Anty-Nyczek: Z zamknie¸tymi oczami widać lepiej?’ (Anti-Nyczek: Do You See Better with Closed Eyes?), Scena, 5–7:3 (2001), 24–25. All translations are by the author.

Magdalena Gołaczyńska, Mozaika współczesności: Teatr alternatwyny w Polsce po roku 1989 (A Mosaic of Contemporary Life: Alternative Theatre in Poland after 1989) (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2002), and Tadeusz Nyczek, Pełnym głosem: Teatr studencki w Polsce 1970–1975 (In Full Voice: Student Theatre in Poland 1970–1975) (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1980).

For a more complete description of the 1954–89 history of the Polish alternative theatre movement, see my Alternative Theatre in Poland 1954–1989 (Amsterdam: Harwood, 1996).

Piotr Gruszczyński, ‘No Alternative?’, trans. Barbara Plebanek, New Theatre Quarterly, 9 (1993), 292–294 (p. 292).

Tony Howard, ‘New Polish Maps of the Mind’, New Theatre Quarterly, 9 (1993), 294–297 (p. 295).

After leaving Ósmy Dzień, Raczak was for one season the artistic director of Teatr Polski in Poznań. He has also founded Teatr Sekta, an alternative theatre with an international company; written a number of articles about alternative theatre; created and directed the performance Łatwe umieranie (Easy Dying, 2002); and served as the artistic director of Międzynarodowy Festiwal Teatralny Malta, an event similar to the Edinburgh Festival, in its thirteenth season in 2003.

Quoted by Włodzimierz Nowak in Wysokie Obcasy – section of Gazeta Wyborcza, 122 (2001). Reprinted in ‘Siły i środki’ (‘The Power and the Means’), ‘Wójciak, Ewa’ on Ruch Teatralny website, http://www.ruch-teatralny.pl/.

Ósmy Dzień's most recent production is Portiernia (The Porter's Lodge, 2003), an indoor production that was guest-directed by Provisorium's Janusz Opryński and is based on the works of the Croatian author Dubravka Ugresić, the Polish author Ryszard Przybylski, and press reports about the Polish club scene.

Gołaczyńska, Mozaika współczesności, p. 116.

Lech Raczak, ‘Two Avant-Gardes’, Le théâtre en Pologne/The Theatre in Poland, 37:3 (1995), 24–29 (p. 24).

Two of the Kompania actors also performed in Gardzienice's Avvakum and Carmina Burana in the early 1990s.

For a more detailed description of the production of Ferdydurke, see my review of Ferdydurke, by Witold Gombrowicz, adapted by Allen J. Kuharski, Theatre Journal, 54:2 (2002), 301–303.

Kathleen Cioffi and Andrej Ceynowa, ‘An Interview with Director Lech Raczak’, The Drama Review, 30:3 (1986), 81–90 (p. 90).

[For more about Gardzienice, see Alison Hodge's article in this issue.]

Juliusz Tyszka, ‘The School of Being Together: Festivals as National Therapy during the Polish “Period of Transition”’, trans. Jolanta Cynkutis and Tom Randolph, New Theatre Quarterly, 13 (1997), 171–182 (p. 171).

Magdalena Gołaczyńska, ‘Malta 2002 and Other Alternative Theatre Festivals’, Slavic and East European Theatre, 22:3 (Fall 2002), 21–28 (p. 21).

Tyszka, ‘The School of Being Together’, pp. 178–179.

Michał Merczyński, one of the founders and currently the executive director of Festiwal Malta, is quoted as saying that one of the basic ideas underlying the festival has been ‘The making from the festival of a “theatre sacrament”, in which the prime movers were not only the performing artists but rather (and perhaps even primarily) the thousands of spectators as co-creators’, in Juliusz Tyszka, ‘A Few Grandiose Observations’, trans. Jolanta Cynkutis and Khalid Tyabji, New Theatre Quarterly, 17 (2001), 319–326 (p. 322).

Grzegorz Ziółkowski, ‘Masz prawo iść pod prąd: Rozmowa z Ewą Wójciak z Teatru Ósmego Dnia’ (‘You Have the Right to Go against the Tide: An Interview with Ewa Wójciak of the Theatre of the Eighth Day’), Scena, 2:3 (1998), 18–19 (p. 19).

Wojciech Krukowski, the artistic director of Akademia Ruchu, is also the director of the Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej in Warsaw. Both the Ośrodek Teatralny-Akademia Ruchu (OTAR) and the Centre for Contemporary Art are very active in hosting artistic and cultural events, often together. See the web sites for the Centre (http://csw.art.pl/) and Akademia Ruchu (http://www.republika.pl/akademiaruchu/) for more information.

For more information about Stacja Szamocin, see Luba Zarembińska, ‘Stacja Teatralna’ (‘The Theatrical Station’), Dialog, 45:2 (February 2000), 153–161.

Gołaczyńska, ‘Malta 2002’, p. 21.

Ewa Adamczyk-Stepan, ‘Lekkość i głębia prawdy’ (‘The Lightness and Depth of Truth’), Teatr, 48:11 (November 1993), 40.

Jana J. Monji, ‘“Moscow-Petushki” an Engrossing Show’, Los Angeles Times, 9 January 1997, p. F16.

Piotr Michałowski, ‘Dwukrotny cud w “Kanie”’ (‘A Double Miracle at “Cana”’), Odra, 2 (1996), 90–93 (p. 93).

Zawadzki no longer works with the company. Kana has created several productions since The Night, among them Szlifierze nocnych diamentów (Polishers of Midnight Diamonds, 1996), Ja, Henryk Bilke (I, Henry Bilke, 2000) and J. P. zdobywa Amerykę (J. P. Conquers America, 2000). The most successful of these has been Rajski ptak (Bird of Paradise, 2000) with Arkadiusz Buszko (another professional actor from Szczecin's Teatr Współczesny), which received the Grand Prize at Festiwal Sztuk Jednego Aktora in Warsaw. A new group of younger members has recently joined the company. Their most recent premiere is Miłość Fedry (Phaedra's Love, 2002) based on Sarah Kane's play.

In 1994 Rzepecki was killed in a car crash that occurred while the company was on the way to the UK to perform. The group decided not to perform Giordano again.

Dasha Krizhanskaya, ‘Teatr Biuro Podróży: Short Sojourns in Metaphysical Space’, Slavic and East European Performance, 22:3 (Fall 2002), 29–40 (p. 35).

Krizhanskaya, ‘Teatr Biuro Podróży’, p. 36.

Barbara Osterloff, ‘Sculpture in the Theatre: A Few Marginal Notes on Premieres', Le théâtre en Pologne/The Theatre in Poland, 41:2 (1999), 7–11 (pp. 9–10).

Claudia Woolgar, ‘Theater: Poland's Theatrical Vision’, The World and I, 8 (March 1993). On line at http://www.worldandi.com/public/1993/march/ar3.cfm).

Wanda Zwinogrodzka, ‘On the Helplessness of Intellect’, Le théâtre en Pologne/The Theatre in Poland, 36:2 (April–June 1994), 34–37 (p. 37).

Gruszczyński, ‘No Alternative’, p. 292.

Szkotak is quoted in a press release from Jane Frere, Biuro Podróży's British producer.

Gołaczyńska, ‘Alternative Theatre in Poland since 1989’, pp. 182–193. See also Mozaika współczesności, ch. 4.

Andrzej Jarecki, ‘Warszawski STS’ (‘The Warsaw STS’), Pamiętnik Teatralny, 11 (1962), 417–442 (p. 422).

Piotr Gruszczyński, ‘Zamykanie teatru otwartego (2): Exitus’ (‘Closing the Open Theatre (2): Exit’), Res Publica, 4:1 (1991), 132–134 (p. 134).

It should be pointed out that this is not the first time in the history of the alternative theatre movement that there has been a lot of crossover between the mainstream and alternative theatres. Many ex-members of STS and Bim-Bom later worked in mainstream theatre, television, or film. Jerzy Grzegorzewski, the director of Teatr Narodowy in Warsaw, started as a director of a student theatre connected with Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Sztuk Plastycznych, where he was a student.

Tomaszuk was fired from his artistic directorship of Teatr Banialuka, and is currently in a legal dispute with the city of Bielsko-Biała. Wierszalin premiered a new production, Święty Edyp (Saint Oedipus), based on a story by Thomas Mann, in the autumn of 2003.

One of the most famous and highly regarded student theatres in the late 1950s and 1960s was Cracow's Teatr 38, which premiered many of the works of French and Polish absurdists in Poland.

In the play, Różewicz depicts the partisans of the underground World War II Home Army in a not-altogether-flattering way. Both the first production in 1979 and the TV Theatre production in 1990 were met with vociferous protests by veterans’ groups. Różewicz withdrew permission for any productions until 2003, when he allowed Provisorium/Kompania to produce the play (even though they had initially done this without his permission) because his literary adviser had personally vouched for the high standard of the production. The play title has also been translated as Dead and Buried.

Juliusz Tyszka, ‘Mdłości’, Dialog, 26:8 (1981), 104–106.

Juliusz Tyszka, ‘Polish Alternative Theatre during the Period of Transition, 1989–94’, trans. Jolanta Cynkutis and Tom Randolph, New Theatre Quarterly, 12 (1996), 71–78 (p. 77).

See Wojciech Majcherek, ‘A Report on the Current State of the Polish Theatre’, Le théâtre en Pologne/The Theatre in Poland, 45:1–2 (2003), 16–19.

Nyczek, ‘Alternatywny’, p. 61.