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The aim of this article is to explore an experimental acting exercise that took place in 2015 during a survival workshop guided by the Romanian-Canadian stage director Alexander Hausvater. The name of the workshop was “The total actor – The survival” and took place in Colibița, a mountain resort in Bistrița-Năsăud county involving 25 young actors. The actors embodied different human typologies for almost 12 hours in the town of Bistrița. The exercise was conducted in different areas of the town and each actor was supposed to remain in the “skin” of the character no matter the circumstances. Even though they interacted with civilians from the urban environment, they had to continue to exhibit the traits and features assigned to the character as if they were on stage. Many of the citizens were taken in by the deceitful appearances and believed that the actors they interacted with were real people with real issues. The closeness between reality and pretence was so tight that some of the spectators insisted on helping the needy, underprivileged typologies some of them were interpreting. Consequently, the difficulty in going on with the acting part became even harder for the participants in the workshops because of this interference. The main purpose of this type of exercise was to point out the complexity an actor is capable of and the involvement s/he must show in front of a changing audience, with a nonconformist moving stage. Were the actors able to prove the director’s expectations according to his given definition of a true actor? Were the actors ready enough to exploit previously unpaved roads? Was this type of practice beneficial to achieve the ultimate goal? Is happening the best way of showing the mixture of abilities an actor has?
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The article discusses characteristic dramaturgical and ethical strategies that appear in thefield of experimental dance for families. It describes selected works of Anna Wańtuch(Contact Families Show) and the Holobiont collective (_on_line__) in which children andtheir guardians are invited to participate in a creative process. Moreover, kids do notimitate adults, but are encouraged to act and perform according to their own wishes andconditions. Both projects practise care and affectionate relations, value the process as anelement of production, and are inspired by change. The article argues that these interactiveperformances can be described as examples of what Mette Ingvarsten calls ‘softchoreography’, i.e. a choreography that produces a safe space for a dialogical meeting andparticularly stresses the importance of being attentive and responsive to the different needsof others. It proves that dance works that embody non-hierarchical social systems and donot objectify young audiences have enormous emancipatory potential and can be treated asspeculations about possible, more inclusive futures.
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The comedy Jugendfleiß by Johann Baptist Hirschfeld, an actor and playwright from Sopron who later worked in the Bánság (Banat) region, was performed in Buda in 1825 and 1826, and in Temesvár (Timișoara) in 1828; the transcript of the manuscript was published by Horst Fassel in 2011 in Kolozsvár (Cluj). The one-act comedy fits into the tradition of dramatic texts that follow the structure of “theatre in the theatre” and also to talk about theatre as an art form. The beginnings of this tradition in world literature can be found in the 4th century Sanskrit play Shakuntala by the Sanskrit author Kalidasa, and its best-known example in German is found in Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s Faust, Vorspiel auf dem Theater. In this tradition, Hirschfeld's work functions as a kind of theatrical guide, or a collection practical knowledge. On the one hand, by analyzing the textual layers of the comedy intended for the stage, the study shows that it interweaves Enlightenment comedy, children’s plays for home performance, and the tradition of professional theatre employing child actors. On the other hand, it examines the scenes of the play in which the actors on stage discuss the characteristics of the performing arts, such as the representation of characters on the stage, the actor’s presence of mind or the theatre’s uniform use of language.
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With grotesque smiles on their faces, the puppets mock, ridicule, tease, spank, or even kill their opponents. The typical characters include devils, the crocodile, Death, and the policeman. Our heroes transcend power and mythological figures, confronting us with our repressed fears that emerge from the unconscious. They can make offensive remarks, use obscene language, be loud-mouthed, pompous, sometimes a bit lazy. They can transgress the moral norms of society, defying the threat of punishment. By the simplest means, they defeat mythological figures representing invincible qualities, overcoming the limitations of the puppeteer, the mortal man. The approach explaining the most characteristic moments of the dramaturgy of the glove puppet show is concretized in the analysis of the death ritual and the mythological creatures. Also closely related are the under-representation of women, the topic of the family model, and the organising principle of fighting. The study outlines the main stages in the development of the Western concept of death and examines how the image of death was abstracted in the Korngut-Kemény family’s puppet shows and how it manifested itself on the level of the puppet figures.
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The premier of Ignác Weinréb’s drama Gyávák és hősök (‘Cowards and Heroes’) took place in the City Theater of Kolozsvár (Cluj), Romania, on 7 July 1945; the play was performed at least five times. This drama in five acts tells the story of a Jewish family taken to Auschwitz and then liberated by the Soviets, using a remarkably direct language, representing the reality of the Holocaust experience in a historically faithful, almost documentary manner. I consider it one of the earliest – if not the first – drama in Hungarian about the Holocaust. To the best of my knowledge, it was never performed again in other theaters in Hungary or Romania, never published, and its author was completely forgotten. In my paper I will give a context of the play, have a close reading of it, and reconstruct as much as possible about its author’s literary career.
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The short presentation of Sára Berczik’s career is partly an exploration of the facts and events that shaped her career. The research is based on written materials and interviews with Sára Berczik available in the National Audiovisual Archive. First, it presents Sára Berczik as a versatile artist in the light of contemporary events and criticism. Second, it highlights the importance of her pedagogical work and the consequences of family events in her life. It gives an insight into her way of thinking, which was also greatly influenced by her music studies. It describes how she managed to keep the movement pedagogy theme of her movement art school alive in such a way that it can still ensure the development of students who wish to dance either as a hobby or professionally, not only at the amateur but also at the professional level. The affective kinesiology developed by Sára Berczik is considered as one of the most important pedagogical principles, which is explained in detail below. In addition, through a case study – the etude she composed/choreographed in 1946, ‘Death and the Maiden’ –, the paper present its pedagogical significance, which still deserves the attention of dance teachers involved in the performing arts.
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The paper attempts to find an answer to the question: can we look at the everyday visual sphere, the non-artistic domain, as an inherent visual image of representation? This phenomenon is analyzed exclusively in case of such representations that differ spaces and images that work out according to the conventional context of representation.
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The five-days-long international Zygmunt Molik conference and workshop series organized by the Parastudio took place in Budapest from 25 October to 29 October 2022. The series of events was hosted by the Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary and the Polish Institute. The paper discusses the theatrical significance of Zygmunt Molik, the structure of the conference, the individual events, the nature of the workshops from a theatrical and pedagogical point of view and gives a brief introduction to the book published on the occasion of the event.
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The ‘Focus on the Community Theatre’ conference was organized in Debrecen on the weekend of 9-11 December 2022. Four recent Hungarian theatre performances were shown there – two recorded, two live – and are briefly described in the essay, which also provides excerpts from the public reflections of the playful “conference”. The introduction of the article starts from some distance: the text mentions Transylvanian theatre performances with civilian actors – some based on fictional scripts, others on the real experiences of the actors or on community work. The author focuses on presentations based on civilians’ own (traumatic) stories. She subtly suggests that we can also tell our defining stories in writing, even if we are theatre critics or theatre-makers
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Arcadian Theatre is a concept for performance practice that uses fictional scenarios to engage participants in autotelic play that facilitates intercultural (interepistemological) dialogue. In so doing, the performance models of Arcadian Theatre enable the cultivation of interaction and social coevolution. Drawing on theories of theatre and scenography, theory of models, philosophy (speech act theory), anthropology and social psychology, the article proposes the use of scenographic environments with its created and curated spaces and performance objects to create performative models and physical fictions capable of engendering novel ecologies with their autonomous epistemologies and ethics that build on the affordances of the spaces, objects and social behaviours within the fictional worlds.
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This article evokes the main arguments put forth by Polish theater scholars with regard to dramatic dialogue and its distinctive features. The author foregrounds the value of Sławomir Świontek’s research: although dating from thirty years ago and rarely discussed, today his findings invite us to resume theoretical considerations on dialogue and to seek new methodological tools. Drawing on Świontek’s observations, the author proposes to look at dramatic dialogue from the perspective of speech acts: locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary. He focuses on the illocutionary potential of dialogue, which is linked to how the text is to be performed and helps to bring out meanings and emotions that are not revealed in silent reading. He emphasizes that a multifaceted analysis of the illocutionary potential of dialogue can lead to determining the felicity conditions for drama performance. The author postulates the interdisciplinarity of this kind of research, as the synergy of multiple perspectives – cultural, anthropological, linguistic, theatrological, and philosophical – can help deepen and systematize knowledge about genre transformations in drama and their link to the changing communication principles and techniques.
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This article discusses the activity of Jerzy Grotowski in Opole and the history of Teatr 13 Rzędów (Theatre of 13 Rows) in 1959–1964. The author makes use of various types of documents collected during her years-long research into the political context of Grotowski’s creative work: interviews with witnesses, letters, memoirs, personal files, censorship papers, and materials from the archives of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (including reports prepared by the state security organs based on denunciations) in order to portray Grotowski as a theater manager. The juxtaposition and analysis of these documents shows the scale of the surveillance of the Theatre of 13 Rows and reveals the authorities’ methods of indirectly exerting control over the artists. The article provides new arguments to support the claim that the experience of working in Opole helped Grotowski the manager to develop politically effective methods of communication with the authorities and the media, which enabled him to retain his artistic autonomy.
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This article concerns the activity of Poznań’s Theatre of the Eighth Day (Teatr Ósmego Dnia) between 1971 and 1975. The author argues that this was a critical period in its history, when the new ensemble redefined its working methods, its view of the theater’s mission, aesthetic and ideological principles, and strategies of establishing an understanding with the audience. Although not received favourably by critics, the performances Wizja lokalna (Inspection of a Scene of Crime, 1973) and Musimy poprzestać na tym, co nazwano rajem na ziemi (We Must Confine Ourselves to an Earthly Paradise, 1975) were crucial for the process of the theater’s transformation and arriving at solutions that resulted in a new look at the existential dimension of acting and the social role of theater. Based on an analysis of self-reflective memories of ensemble members, documents stored in the theater’s archives, and the reception of the two performances, the author reconstructs this process and presents its internal and external conditions.
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In 2020, the Jewish Theatre celebrated two important anniversaries: the centenary of Szymon An-ski's most famous Jewish play The Dybbuk and the 70th anniversary of the nationalization of the Jewish Theatre in Poland. The article recalls the history of Dybbuk, which was inspired by Jewish folklore, studied by An–ski in Podolia and Volhynia in 1911–1913. The manuscript of this play was written in Russian and sent to the famous Moscow Art Theatre. The author of The Dybbuk took advantage of the advice given by its director Konstantin Stanislavski. The influence of the Russian theatre of the time was noticeable in stagings of The Dybbuk – in Yiddish (1920, Warsaw) and Hebrew (1922, Moscow) and thus shaped the modern stage form of Yiddish and Israeli art. The nationalization of the Jewish Theatre, which took place thanks to the efforts of the then directors, Ida Kamińska and Marian Melman, meant the stabilization of Jewish theatrical art, which had been dependent on financial support of the Jewish audience for a hundred years. This is how the “Polish state-owned Jewish Theatre” was created, which could count on a state subsidy, but at the same time, especially in the 1950s, was subject to strong political indoctrination, which manifested itself mainly in the choice of plays.
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The Jewish theatre was a modern, secular form of communication, part of a complex multilingual system of communication in a modernizing Jewish society. The article analyzes various manifestations of multilingualism and of crossing language borders in the Jewish theatrical life of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Phenomena of this kind are shown both in relation to the language of performances, as well as professional and amateur circles of Jewish acting companies, audiences, publishing houses and theatre critics.
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The article is devoted to Ester Rachel Kamińska (1870-1925), a legendary Jewish actress, one of the first women on the Yiddish stage, since 1955 the patron of the Jewish theatre in Warsaw. It shows her Jewish and non-Jewish contacts and connections, striving to discover the secret of her uniqueness and uniqueness.At the beginning, anti-theatre prejudices in the Jewish community are discussed, which the first actors, especially women, had to face if they wanted to perform in public on stage and make a living from it. At the same time, Kamińska is included in the long tradition of performances in Yiddish in Warsaw, dating back to the years before A. Goldfaden established a professional secular Yiddish theatre, i.e. before 1876.Then, the question is answered why the artist hailing from Lithuanian Jews was chosen as the patron of the Jewish theatre in Warsaw. Based on her memoirs Derner un blumen, published in 2020 in Polish as Boso przez ciernie i kwiaty (Barefoot Through Thorns and Flowers), it is shown how the actress herself understood the identity of a "Litvak woman" and a "Varsovian woman". The relationship between the artist born in Porozów (today Belarus) and Warsaw is presented. The article discusses the youth of the future star. Her non-artistic gainful occupations were taken into account. Artistic initiations were not omitted: her first trips to the theatre, singing lessons, debut in operetta, participation in a drama performance. However, her achievements in the country (Russian Empire) and abroad (USA) are also taken into account, which consolidated her position and decided about her choice as the patron of the state Jewish theatre in Warsaw.In addition, the article explains why Ester Rachel Kamińska was called the "mother of Jewish theatre" (this term was placed on her matzevah) and what vision of the theatre was associated with it. At the same time, the distinction introduced in the gender theory (by A. Rich) between motherhood as an experience and motherhood as an institution is used. The achievements of the Kamiński family, which can be called a "theatrical dynasty", are taken into account. Women belonging to it inherited the roles of their eminent mothers, creating a performing tradition and continuing the concept of artistic Yiddish theatre focused on a demanding viewer and open to non-Jewish audiences.
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The article analyses the reception of the theatrical adaptation of Shalom Asch's Kiddush Ha-Shem (directed by Michał Weichert) in the Jewish press in Poland. It shows how the production was received in national and local Yiddish periodicals and Jewish journals and magazines published in Polish. It reviews the ways the Jewish critics evaluated the artistic dimension of Weichert's production, focusing mainly on the director's innovative concept of staging a novel. The article is also an attempt to answer the question as to what extent the anti-Semitic sentiment, which grew stronger in Europe in the interwar period, influenced the reception of the Kiddush Ha-Shem in the Jewish press in Poland.
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The first post-war premiere of Dybbuk by Sh. An–ski took place on the stage of the Łódź Jewish Theatre on December 21, 1946, directed by Mojżesz Lipman. Lipman was an actor and director known for his pre-war artistic activity. In the 1920s and 1930s, he directed in Jewish theatres in Łódź, Warsaw and Kraków. After World War II, he was an actor, director and manager of the Łódź Jewish Theatre. In his Dybbuk, Lipman emphasized above all (as J. Jonasowicz wrote in Nasze Słowo) "the folk, moral side of this dramatic legend".The second post-war Dybbuk was a performance by the State Jewish Theatre named after Ester Rachel Kamińska in Warsaw in February 1957. The author of the staging was the outstanding actor, theatre and film director and manager of theatres Abraham Morewski, commonly remembered as the excellent Azriel, tzaddik from Miropol, in the world premiere of The Dybbuk on the stage of the Vilnius Troupe on December 9, 1920, and in the same role in the film The Dybbuk directed by Michał Waszyński (1937).
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