Feasts in Time of the Plague: Polish Theatre and Drama, Post-Solidarity

Feasts in Time of the Plague: Polish Theatre and Drama, Post-Solidarity E.J. CZERWINSKI The classics are back and East European theatres are feasting on them. It is that time again when the winds ofresistance die down and the ominous calm spreads across the theatre community. It has happened before, each time signaled by the censorship of Adam Mickiewicz's Dziady (Forefather's Eve), a nineteenthcentury class.ic· that straightforwardly excoriates the old Russian regime. Unfortunately, things have not changed much and Mickiewicz's diatribes against the Russians translate fortuitously into criticism of the Soviets. The present state of theatrical ennui in Poland, however, was precipitated not by Mickiewicz's poetic abuse, but rather by General Jaruzelski's prosaic convening of ZOMO - the Polish equivalent of Hell's Angels. Polish actors, directors and producers responded with their own convocation - a total boycott of television (one channel continues to drone on, attempting to give a semblance of normality to a catastrophic cultural situation). The television boycott has had its reverberations in Poland's theatres. When Jan Pawel Gawlik was appointed director of Warsaw's Dramatyczny Teatr (Dramatic Theatre), the actors and staff, led by the actor Gustaw Holoubek, resigned their positions. J6zef Szajna took an early retirement, resigning from his post as director of Teatr Studio, rather than compromise the dictates of his conscience. Adam Hanuszkiewicz is no longer director of Teatr Narodowy (The National Theatre). Of the respected figures in the theatre, only Kazimierz Dejmek created a controversy within the theatrical community when he assumed the directorship of Warsaw's Polski Theatre. By comparison, it came as no surprise that Jerzy Krassowski and Krystyna Skuszanka, the husbandwife team of Nowa Huta fame (in the fifties and early sixties Szajna was their scene designer), quickly stepped in to fill the void created by Hanuszkiewicz's resignation from The National Theatre. As a result of the theatre boycott and the actors' insurgency, the government quickly abolished all unions and called upon the aging former president of 42 E.1. CZERWINSKI SPATIF/ZASP (Union of Polish Artists), Henryk Sletynski, to form a new "house union." The effort, of course, was unsuccessful: actors, artists and professionals - as if answering in perfect hannony -:- refused to join any governmentsponsored organization. Ifone group in Eastern Europe is following the spirit of Solidarity, it is those whose moral duty is to create a country's culture. The best artists have proved to be the finest citizens. On 4 May 1983 Andrzej Wajda was dismissed as head of Group x, the movie production unit. His activities as spokesman for Polish artists during Solidarity's too brief halcyon days and his film Man of Iron, which won the Golden Palm Award of the Cannes Film Festival, stressed too blatantly the cynical shifts in Polish politics. Wajda remains in France, where he is completing work on Danton's Affair, based on the Polish play by Stanislawa Przybyszewska. During the same period Poland's finest actor, Daniel Olbrychski, star of several international productions including Giinter Grass's The Tin Drum, was requested to leave the country because of his criticism of the tactics employed by the government. Other artists have been directed - ordered - to conform, to create for a dubious posterity "sermons in stones." Some have succumbed; the majority, despite insidious harassment, continues to hold on to what one director has referred to as "a still and quiet conscience."I I The plethora of classics, whether by design or not, has turned into swan songs for various directors. Jozef Szajna retired, leaving behind him three productions which will continue in Teatr Studio's repertory: Replika (1973), Dante (1974), and Cervantes (1976). His premature retirement (he now devotes his time to painting) startled the professional community. Vibrant and filled with a lust for life, despite the fact that he spent his youth (from age seventeen to twenty-two) in several death camps, Szajna has always been proud ofhis role as Poland's Hound of Heaven. For this reason one takes his alleged retirement with a grain of salt. In contrast, Jerzy Grotowski's exit from the theatre, especially with the recent abolishment of his Laboratory Theatre in Wrodaw, has an air of...