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Theater 34.3 (2004) 18-29


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Witold Gombrowicz

A Visual Production History

Allen J. Kuharski

Looking at photographs of Gombrowicz's plays in production, the threads connecting a century of theater history become visible. The selection appearing on the following pages demonstrates how successive generations of directors have transmitted artistic influence through this playwright's modernist oeuvre.

—Editors


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Barbara Krafftowna as the title character in the world premiere of Gombrowicz's Ivona, Princess of Burgundia, directed by Halina Mikołajska, at Warsaw's Polish Army Theater (later known as Teatr Dramatyczny or the Dramatic Theater), 1957. The production took place twenty years after the original publication of the text in the prestigious interwar literary review Skamander. The Warsaw production was part of a brief thaw in the censorship of Gombrowicz's works in Poland in the late 1950s. Although the premiere was a critical and popular success, a second Polish production of the play was not permitted until 1975. Mikołajska was the first of many female directors drawn to the play and its all but silent title character, and she became a highly visible dissident during the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She was imprisoned after the declaration of martial law in Poland in December 1981. Photo: Franciszek Myszkowski, Union of Polish Theatre Artists (ZASP) Archives, Warsaw
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Tadeusz Kantor's illustration of Ivona with her two aunts for the first edition of Ivona, Princess of Burgundia published in Poland after World War II. Warsaw: Pan´stwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1958. By 1960, Gombrowicz's writing was again banned by the Polish authorities. Kantor actively sought permission from Gombrowicz to produce the play, but much to Kantor's dismay, the playwright intended that Ivona and The Marriage should be produced first in classical repertory theaters, rather than by experimental groups.

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The Marriage, directed by Jerzy Jarocki and designed by Krystyna Zachwatowicz, at the Student Theater, Gliwice Polytechnical Institute, 1960. This student production was both the Polish and world premiere. The play could not be staged again in Poland until its professional premiere in Warsaw in 1974, again by Jarocki and Zachwatowicz. Jarocki is acknowledged as the Polish director most deeply connected to the play. Photo: Stanisraw Gadomski, archives of Rita Gombrowicz
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The Father (Alexis Nitzer) and the Mother (Juliette Brac) in the French premiere of The Marriage, a 1963 student production by the young Argentinean director Jorge Lavelli and Polish scenographer Krystyna Zachwatowicz, presented professionally in Paris in 1964 and in West Berlin in 1965. Its success helped launch Lavelli's directing career in France and abroad. The production's costume design clearly invokes Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi—the French surrealist playwright was one of Gombrowicz's favorite authors and one of the few he acknowledged as an influence. Photo: Agence de Presse Bernand, archives of Rita Gombrowicz

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Alf Sjöberg's Swedish premiere of The Marriage, designed by Acke Oldenburg, at Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theater, 1966. Sjöberg also staged Ivona in the 1960s, and both plays were again produced by the Royal Dramatic in the 1990s. Photo: Beata Bergström, archives of Rita Gombrowicz
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Gombrowicz seated alongside the surrealist poet Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes with the cast of an amateur production of Ivona, Princess of Burgundia at the Palais de la Méditerranée in Nice on December 19, 1967. It was the only time Gombrowicz ever saw one of his plays performed. Photo: Archives of Bernard Fontaine and Rita Gombrowicz

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Josef Svoboda's design for Ernst Schröder's production of The Marriage at the Schiller Theater, West Berlin, 1968. The production was a major critical and popular success, inspiring Schröder and Svoboda to produce all three of Gombrowicz's major plays at the Schiller Theater, culminating with Operetta in 1972. Photo: Ilse Buhs, archives of Rita Gombrowicz
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