Academic literature on the topic 'Teatr Laboratorium (Wrocław, Poland)'

Jan Dorman (b. Dębowa Góra, now Sosnowiec, 1912–d. Będzin, 1986) was a teacher, director, stage designer, author of texts for theatre, founder of the Experimental Child’s Theatre (ETD) in Sosnowiec (1945–1951) and The Children of Zagłębie’s Theatre (TDZ) in Będzin, which has been named after him (1951–1977), lecturer at the Faculty of Puppetry in Wrocław, Branch of the State Academic School of Theatre (PWST) in Krakow, now Stanisław Wyspiański Academy of Theatre Arts (1978–1986), promoter of culture in Będzin. His theatre practice situated itself between children’s theatre, young spectator’s theatre, puppet theatre, avant-garde art theatre and experiments close to the happening. Dorman’s performances were presented at many festivals internationally; the work of TDZ that he directed represented Poland at the International Exhibition of Stage Design in Amiens, France (1969). Dorman wrote and adapted texts for theatre, composed and selected music, designed the sets (along with his son, Jacek), initiated the “Herody” review of folk productions, maintained extensive contacts with Polish and foreign theatre communities, contributed regularly to theatre magazines (including Scena, Teatr Lalek, Teatr), and he published his book Children Playing at Theatre. Throughout his life, Dorman recorded his practice through meticulously produced archival documentation.

This text shows changes in the way oral history has been perceived in the last 10 years in Poland, what projects are being conducted at the moment and where research on this subject is going. Contemporary research in oral history has taken a few directions. First, this method is treated as a source prompted by historians and used in by them in research activity. Second, an interest taken in this method is manifested in methodological and historiographic reflection. The third group is research on archiving audio-visual documents. Another area of interest for oral history is widely understood education and popularization of this method. In Poland there are a few serious institutions/centrers that focus their research and work methods on oral form of information, such as Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (National Digital Archive) and Centrum Edukacji Obywatelskiej (Center for Civic Education). Widely available are internet sources such as „Uczyć się z historii” (“To Learn from History”) and „Świadkowie Historii” (“Witnesses to History”), which gather oral evidence from people all over Poland. The article discusses also activities of the KARTA Center from Wrocław, “Brama Grodzka – Teatr NN” (Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre) Center and Studio Historii Mówionej (Oral History Center) from Lublin. The Memory and Future Institute from Wrocław is a thriving institution as well. An analysis has also been made of initiatives taken by circles in Olsztyn, Łódź, and at the Auschwitz-Birke-nau Museum. In 2009 the first in Poland Oral History Society was founded (Towarzystwo Historii Mówionej). This was possible thanks to institutions that are growing and becoming more and more active, and also because of academics who take interest in this kind of research. Every year the Society organizes nationwide conferences. Also other academic centers and societies organize conferences and meetings devoted to the culture of memory and oral history.

Abstract Jan Klata’s Shakespearean productions are famous for his liberal attitude to the text, innovative sets and locations, and a strong contemporary context. His 2004 H., a Teatr Wybrzeże production performed in the Gdańsk Shipyard, reaches to the Polish history of the eighties (the importance of Solidarity and the fall of communism) to comment on the state of the democratic Poland twenty years later. The 2012 Titus Andronicus, a coproduction of Teatr Polski in Wrocław and Staatsschauspiel Dresden, explores the impact of historical traumas on national prejudice and relations within the new Europe. The 2013 Hamlet with Schauspielhaus Bochum again tries to diagnose the contemporary condition and is again deeply rooted in a specific geopolitical context. Discussing both Titus Andronicus and Hamlet, I would like to explore Klata’s formula of working with Shakespeare. Primarily, he takes advantage of the fact that Shakespeare’s texts are not simply source texts but hypertexts with multiple layers of meanings accumulated over the centuries of circulation, production and adaptation. Perhaps similarly to Heiner Müller, whose plays he willingly incorporates in his productions, Klata anatomizes the plays and then radically reconstructs them using other texts, literary and paraliterary. What Klata eventually puts on stage is a hybrid that is rooted in the Shakespearean hypertexts but also heavily draws from historical, cultural and political contexts, and that is relevant to him as the director and to the particular specificities of the venues, theatres and companies he works with. The hybridized and contextualized Shakespeare becomes for Klata a way to comment on current issues that he sees as vital, like dealing with the burden of the past, confronting the reality of the present, or understanding and expressing national identity, problems that are at once universal and specific for a person living in the EU in the twenty first century.

In this testimony, Carla Pollastrelli charts the main stages leading to Grotowski's settlement in Pontedera in Italy and to the creation of the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski. As the Year of Grotowski, supported by UNESCO, draws to a close, her words provide a fitting tribute to a man whose influence has surpassed all geographical boundaries, whether those of his native Poland, adoptive Italy, or place of temporary refuge, the United States. Carla Pollastrelli is the co-director of the Fondazione Pontedera Teatro. Pontedera Teatro. From 1986 to 2000 she was an executive of the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski, which in 1996 was renamed the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards. She has edited translations of Grotowski's texts in Polish into Italian since 1978, and is the co-editor with Ludwig Flaszen of Il Teatr Laboratorium di Jerzy Grotowski, 1959–1969: testi e materiali di Jerzy Grotowski e Ludwik Flaszen con uno scritto di Eugenio Barba (Jerzy Grotowski's Laboratory Theatre, 1959–1969: Jerzy Grotowski and Ludwig Flaszen's Texts and Materials and a Text by Eugenio Barba (Fondazione Pontedera Teatro, 2001; second edition, La Casa Usher, 2007) and the collection of Grotowski's texts, Holiday e teatro delle fonti (Holiday and the Theatre of Sources, La Casa Usher, 2006).

The ecology of the rural setting in which Double Edge Theatre lives and works is as integral to its artistic work as to its principles of social justice, and these qualities mark the ensemble’s singular profile not only in the United States but also increasingly on the world theatre map. Stacy Klein co-founded the company in Boston in 1982 as a women’s theatre with a defined feminist programme. In 1997, Double Edge moved its work space to a farm that Klein had bought in Ashfield, Massachusetts, commuting from there back to Boston to show its productions. Within a few years, Klein and her collaborators were acutely aware of their separation from the local community, which necessitated a change of perspective to encompass personal and creative engagement with local people and to develop audiences within the area, while not losing sight of their international links. Carlos Uriona, formerly a popular-theatre activist from Argentina, had joined Double Edge and facilitated the local immersion that ultimately became its lifeline, most visibly during the Covid-19 pandemic, as Klein here observes. Klein, who had been a student of Rena Mirecka in Poland (starting in 1976), has maintained her friendship and professional relations with this founding member of the Teatr Laboratorium led by Jerzy Grotowski, inviting Mirecka to run wokshops at the Double Edge Farm. Collaboration with Gardzienice (also from the Grotowski crucible) through the Consortium of Theatre Practices (1999–2001) extended Klein’s Polish connections. She expanded her research on community cultures in Eastern and Central Europe and developed these experiences in her probing, distinctly imaginative explorations of theatre-making, while taking a new approach to participatory theatre-making in Ashfield. Her highly visual and sensual compositions are driven by her sense of the fantastic, no more strikingly so than in Klein’s Summers Spectacles, which are performed outdoors, in concert with the Farm’s natural environment – fields, trees, water, birds, animals, and heaven’s firmament. Double Edge’s profound commitment in the past decade to what it now terms ‘living culture’ and ‘art justice’ has taken root in multiracial collaborations, primarily with the indigenous peoples of Western Massachusetts. This Conversation took place on the winter solstice, 21 December 2020, a date that Maria Shevtsova, Editor of NTQ, had chosen symbolically. It was transcribed by Kunsang Kelden and edited by Shevtsova. Many thanks are extended to Travis Coe of Double Edge for assembling with such loving care the photographs requested.

This thesis explores temporal forms of architectural meaning through the investigation of the dramatic space of "ritual theatre." In particular, it analyzes the thought and several theatrical productions of the twentieth century Polish theatre director, Jerzy Grotowski: Grotowski is of particular interest because he designed a "total dramatic space" that incorporated both the actors and the spectators (although without necessarily integrating them) for each of his dramatic works. In each case, the spatial relationships created by the theatrical architecture were indissolubly connected to the meaning of the drama itself. In this way, space was used as a kind of third protagonist that, along with the actors and spectators, participates in the theatrical ritual.

En suivant les parcours et les pratiques de l’«art comme véhicule» auprès du Workcenter of J. Grotowski and Thomas Richards je me propose de mettre en évidence les éléments mobilisés dans la formation du Performer, en tant que agent créatif dans un contexte artistique spécifique. Dans le laboratoire du Workcenter, la tradition théâtrale stanislavskienne dialogue avec les pratiques rituels pour expérimenter les possibilités de l’action dramatique réflexive et expressive. L’art performative, envisagé comme véhicule de transformation interhumaine, devient ici un projet chargé de tensions éthiques et culturelles. Cette culture habite le théâtre comme possibilité de formation d’un «homme nouveau», qui maîtrise l’art de la fiction performative pour questionner et expliciter les "fictions" dans la Culture
Following the practices of «art as vehicle» at the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, I focus on the performative elements that are mobilized in the training of the Performers, considered as creative agents in a specific artistic context. At the Workcenter in Pontedera, the theatrical tradition initiated by Stanislavskij dialogues with ritual practices in order to experiment the potentialities of reflexive and expressive dramatic action. Performing art is considered here as a vehicle of human development and transformation