Grzegorz Ziółkowski

Voices from Within. Grotowski's Polish Collaborators

This book focuses on the voices of collaborators of Grotowski from different periods of his work and research. It gathers together previously unpublished materials in English (with one or two exceptions) such as texts, interviews and dialogues with Grotowski’s collaborators, actors and work leaders, as well as their notes and testimonies. The materials have already been edited by Polish authors and published in Polish journals but have only rarely appeared in English. The issue gives the English readers the unique possibility of gaining insight into the work of Grotowski from the perspective of his collaborators.

Editorial – Polish Theatre after 1989: Beyond Borders

The broad time scale we cover in this issue from 1989 to May 2004 has been a period of multiple and various transitions in Poland, as Tamara Trojanowska points out in the introduction to her survey piece on new Polish drama. Images of the 1 May celebrations by the ten new European Union (EU) member countries were transmitted around the world, showing how far Poland and this vast region of a newly integrated Europe have come since the Communist May Day parades of just over 15 years ago. However, little is stable in Poland as a national poll in June 2004 demonstrated, which showed a clear generational split between old and young. A large percentage of people expressed nostalgia for the good old days, even if few (and especially the younger generation) are actually serious about going back to Communism. For younger people, rather than being a concrete reality, Communism is a stylistic device used for example in the design of clubs – there are many bars and clubs called PRL (the former Polish People’s Republic). Older people showed understandable concern that their security had diminished in the new climate, for the fast changes have led to increased wealth for some but unemployment for many, something that did not officially exist under Communism. Scarcely had the celebratory aftermath been cleared away than Leszek Miller, Poland’s Primer Minister, resigned on 2 May – just another victim (though not a hapless one) of the political and social instability and extreme corruption that depressingly still pervade Polish institutions. Such tumultuous shifts are no stranger to Poland’s realities, but where do they leave the theatre and how does it cope? What are the legacies of the older generations who made such an impact on world theatre – directors like Jerzy Grotowski, Jerzy Jarocki, Tadeusz Kantor, Lech Raczak and Andrzej Wajda; critics like Jan Kott and Konstanty Puzyna; writers like Sławomir Mrożek and Tadeusz Różewicz; and actors like Ryszard Cieślak and Andrzej Seweryn, who, intriguingly, were brought together in Paris for Peter Brook’s 1985 Mahabharata? How will the very established identity of Polish theatre, forged partly as a dissenting response to the oppressive conditions of Communism, transform in welcoming new figures like playwrights Lidia Amejko and Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol. 15(1), 2005, 1 – 7