A poorly remembered part of Polish theatre’s interwar avant-garde period are proposals to democratise culture and theatre that were generated by so-called people’s theatre. Those ideas remain marginal to the interests of theatre historians and scholars of the avant-garde, possibly because they originated outside of institutions and had consistent interest in the working (popular) class. Manifestos produced by this current in theatre, especially those created by Jędrzej Cierniak, Antonina Sokolicz and Witold Wandurski, permit the reconstruction of one of the first Polish projects in theatre which was at once socially engaged and popular.¹ That project is original in that it does not focus only on the spectacle and its discursive potential, but encompasses the creative process in its entirety along with the situation of the performance itself. In the project, theatre must be analysed as a holistic and intra-connected phenomenon, enmeshed in a network of social relations, and as one from which it is difficult to isolate a single constituent. It is therefore impossible to conduct an analysis of a theatrical work which would disconnect that work from its process of production and relations of power included in that process, and without considering the social context of its propagation. Works by the theatre-makers named above are in dire need of re-reading: they are neither general wish lists nor do they limit their ambition to a narrow section of theatre; instead, they are comprehensive concepts, which on one hand position theatre in a broader cultural perspective, and on the other include specific solutions and technicalities.

All three of them created theatre projects in response to the socio-political situation of Poland in their day: the reconstruction of statehood after long decades under partitions, and the consolidation and re-constitution of society. Their political beliefs differed, and disparities in their worldviews – especially between Cierniak and the others – meant that their works have been very rarely discussed together. A new reading of their texts today, however, reveals many strands they share in common, which in turn allows them to be viewed as one internally complex project. Each of these creators takes as his or her starting point a critique of class disparities and of the social and economic inequalities that these entail. Each also sets a clear political objective for theatre: to strengthen and emancipate the working class in the new Polish republic.

What connects the three artists and what constitutes the originality of their oeuvre is also the unique combination of a vision and an idea with social commitment, along with a search for ways to put the vision and the idea into practice. Along with being productive writers, all three were involved in theatrical work with specific groups. Antonina Sokolicz (1879–1942), writer, publicist, translator, actor, socialist and communist activist, set up Scena i Lutnia Robotnicza [Workers’ Stage and Lute] in 1919, a centre for self-education and creativity for workers in Warsaw. Considered the first workers’ theatre in interwar Poland, it operated under her leadership until 1921, when it was closed down by the authorities. Jędrzej Cierniak (1886–1942), pedagogue, activist in Związek Teatrów Ludowych [the Association of People’s Theatres], editor of the journal Teatr Ludowy [People’s Theatre], worked with young people to prepare theatre productions and was initiator and chair of Instytut Teatrów Ludowych [the Institute of People’s Theatres], established in 1929 and organising courses for members of rural theatres, among its other activities. Witold Wandurski (1891–1934), dramaturge, poet, publicist, theatre director and communist activist, organised a theatre school in association with Związek Młodzieży Robotniczej “Siła” [the Force Society of Working Youth] and, after it was shut down in 1923, took up cooperation with Teatr Scena Robotnicza [Worker’s Stage Theatre], which he led from 1925 until it was closed by the authorities in 1927.

Cover of Scena i Lutnia Robotnicza. Jednodniówka poświęcona zagadnieniom teatru robotniczego, Wydawnictwo Sceny i Lutni Robotniczej, Warsaw, 1920. Source: National Library.

The three artists discussed in this article were also all conversant in contemporary theatre of their time, both Polish and international: they referenced artists associated with the Great Reform, and had connections or co-operations with important Polish theatre directors of the period.² Their awareness of transformations which theatre was undergoing in the interwar period stemmed from their recognition of this theatre as the basic context for their work – their manifestos clearly reference the history of theatre and take strong stances concerning its contemporaneous transformations. Cierniak based his project on the assumption that people’s theatre and professional theatre are two separate and distinct genres of theatre, thereby undermining the hierarchical dependence between amateur theatre and that of professionals, with the idea that the former is secondary to the latter in artistic terms. The stance Sokolicz and Wandurski took towards professional theatre was much more radical: their point of departure was pointed criticism of contemporary bourgeois theatre and a reckoning of failures on the part of avant-garde reformers. If Cierniak viewed his project as parallel to professional theatre, Sokolicz and Wandurski appeared to ignore such divisions, instead formulating their ideas as alternative scenarios for developments in contemporary theatre.

All three dissociated themselves from the so-called theatre for the people³, the prevalent model for amateur theatre in the interwar period, and were critical of indiscriminate imitation of methods and work modes typical in professional theatre, believing those were wrongly assumed to hold universal value while in fact they could not succeed when transplanted to different social contexts. They also noted violence inherent in the work organisation in amateur theatre companies, which stemmed from hierarchical power relations and the strong position of a director – an expert working with amateurs, with differences in social status compounding the problem.

“Theatre for the people” was thus to be replaced by “people’s theatre” [often rendered as “folk theatre”], or “communal theatre” [from ‘commune’],⁴ which “ought to be the creative work of a given milieu, an expression of its aesthetic needs”⁵ that could become “a product of collective effort and work”.⁶ This collective subject, which stems from a perspective grounded in social class, is strongly present in concepts discussed both during rehearsals and on stage. An innovative project of collective creation, it leads to a question about the position of the director, which – for each of the three artists under consideration – was a specific question about their own position in the creative process. Accounts of the work of the companies they worked with attests to their search for a new formula for directing.

The following passage describes Antonina Sokolicz’s practice of conducting rehearsals:

The director of the Worker’s Stage and Lute – following the organising principle of developing creative intuition in workers – attempted to impose on performers as few accents or movements as possible, seeking only to convey the logical relation between text and performance, motivating the need for any gesture or instance of emphasis.⁷

Jędrzej Cierniak wrote about the centring of group members as subjects and about the democratic process of decision-taking:

all our work, from discussing the programme or the subject of a production up until its performance, takes place collectively, as a commune, and that is why each of us has to be able to speak freely and to have a say. We should also take care so that every voice, even when it brings little innovation, be respected.⁸

Elsewhere, Cierniak emphasised that:

no one wishes to order anyone about, impose his or her will on others, or to consider himself or herself superior to others. We are all equal, as if we were brothers and sisters in an artistic commune.⁹

Witold Wandurski wrote about work in the Łódź company he was in charge of:

To decide the repertoire of Workers’ Stage Theatre, the manager first describes the content and key motifs of the proposed play, then the play is read. The director then outlines the projected staging arrangements and their approach to the piece. The company then engages in debate. The results of the debate determine the final decision on whether to stage the play and, if so, how: whether to only conduct rehearsals, or to not work with it at all.¹⁰

The issue of repertoire allows a detailed consideration of the ideas of and demands for collective work in communal-theatre projects. In the 1920s and 1930s, lack of repertoire was a problem frequently flagged by those who organised rural and workers’ theatres. Amateur theatre, criticised by all three artists discussed here, was dominated by plays of dubious literary quality, touching on working-class themes but written by authors who did not originate from that environment and had little knowledge of it. Those plays projected representations with no basis in previous exploration, therefore, and were therefore misrepresentations; they also, as Cierniak emphatically noted,¹¹ created and perpetuated a stereotypical image of a folk or working-class protagonist. Wandurski also pointed out that those theatrical forms only appeared to be neutral, but were in fact weighted with a deeply ideological message.¹² Discussions on repertoire in communal theatre therefore include debates about the possibility of taking control over representation, also understood by the three writers analysed here as preparation towards reclaiming a voice outside of theatre, in public life.

These debates concerned the usefulness of existing writing for theatre, the search for a new repertoire, and the work with a literary text during rehearsals. The attitudes of the three creators to dramatic writing produced in earlier literary periods show more divergence than their uniform criticism of repertoire in amateur theatres. Sokolicz and Wandurski took a different stance in the on-going debate in proletarian theatre on the proper attitude to take on “the heritage of bourgeois and aristocratic art”.¹³ Aware of the class context and the message of such art, Sokolicz nevertheless believed it necessary to become familiar with the output and read it critically. She declared:

The proletariat will reject accretions, formed in periods of the decay and disintegration of erstwhile theatre. It should, however, acquire the values taken from the best artistic traditions, for they will substantially enrich the creative capability of new theatre.¹⁴

Though Wandurski considered Sokolicz a pioneer of workers’ theatre, he was more radical as far as repertoire was concerned. His Workers’ Stage Theatre decided “not to stage classical plays at all, since these are too distant and alien to the ideology of the proletariat”.¹⁵

What sets the views of Sokolicz even further apart from those of Wandurski – and what also constitutes a defining feature of her project – is her fascination with the Polish Romantic tradition. She wrote a general-interest book about [poet and playwright] Juliusz Słowacki to raise his profile,¹⁶ referenced the Romantics on several occasions in her writing,¹⁷ dreamt about staging Klątwa [The Curse] by Stanisław Wyspiański on location in a specific village with participation of inhabitants,¹⁸ and her one-off publication about workers’ theatre had an epigraph from Wyzwolenie [Liberation, by Wyspiański]: “One has to get there somehow and enter by force! You are the force”.¹⁹ This fascination appears to have a strong bearing on her concept of workers’ theatre, starting from the literary style to a Romantic vision of liberation from oppression, and a yearning for mass theatre. At the same time, Sokolicz realised that Romantic dramas were not necessarily the best places for workers to articulate “what pains them, what gives them joy and excitement”, and emphasised that they were too difficult in terms of demands on acting skills.²⁰

Cierniak, who consistently divided theatre into two types, focused not so much on a critique of plays staged in the professional theatre, but on a search for a repertoire that responded to the needs of people’s theatre. He found one such source in the culture of tradition understood as “the heritage of Polish country folk, in its full diversity and abundance”.²¹ His writings show an idealisation of traditional folk culture, probably stemming from nostalgic memories of his home village, Zaborów, from disappointment in social and economic changes and the pace of urban life, and from a fascination with the aesthetics of that culture. He viewed traditional culture as a reservoir of authenticity, simplicity, beauty and above all as a project of Polishness with potential for development.

Jędrzej Cierniak (middle, in folk outfit) with celebration participants, Kraków, 1935. Photographer unknown/collections of the National Digital Archives.

The principal rationale behind the “ritual theatre” envisioned by Cierniak was different, however. In the first place, he considered traditional rites and customs to be expressions of the countryside and its very own culture and as such a sorely needed repository of bona fide grassroots repertoire. Second, he noted the performative dimension of ritual forms, which he called “the very source of theatre”.²² These two non-aesthetic, non-sentimental reasons are worth remembering today, when his project is often reduced to the on-stage popularisation of folklore, and when some go so far as to consider him a precursor of touring institutions such as the Mazowsze Folk Song and Dance Ensemble. His writings certainly fed into the folklorism-like phenomenon, but what mattered to him was the search for a grassroots, bottom-up narration, much more than aesthetic fascinations or attempts to protect tradition.²³ As he wrote:

This is our starting point, which should make it easier for us to capture our own gesture, expression. Later, and perhaps at the same time, we wish to slowly work with masterpieces of Polish and foreign dramatic writing.²⁴

Cierniak also emphasised that to stage rites was only the first phase of work – “after all, people’s theatre cannot stop at ethnography alone”.²⁵

One way in which communal theatre sought to remedy the shortage of repertoire was to look for new authors and then to write its own texts. Notable here is the work of Cierniak and Wandurski, and especially the close connection between their texts and theatrical practice. The latter’s account of how Workers’ Stage Theatre worked on his plays – Śmierć na gruszy [1926, Death in a Pear Tree] and Gra o Herodzie [1926, Game about Herod] – describes revisions made to the text during rehearsals, also describing writing in fits and starts, from rehearsal to rehearsal, and notes the contribution of the members of the group, who – for instance – put up “passive resistance” to the first play.²⁶

Cierniak’s writing for stage – none of which he called a drama – is unique. His scripts for “spectacles” – Franusiowa Dola [1934, The Plight of Franuś], Szopka krakowska [1926, Kraków Nativity Scene], W słonecznym kręgu [1930, In a Sunlit Circle] – “projects” including Sobótka [1930, Midsummer Night), and transcripts of “stagings” such as Wesele krakowskie [1926, A Kraków Wedding] must be treated as a search for a dramatic form which would provide directions while remaining open to modifications at the same time. He encouraged his readers-performers to make cuts and changes in the text, emphasising the “loose construction of the dramatic whole”²⁷ and the intended quality of dialogues as merely “examples”.²⁸ In his Opowieść o żołnierzu tułaczu [The Tale of the Wandering Soldier], he stated:

I do not wish to provide a ready-made thing to be memorised and acted out, because that would be missing the point; I am merely giving one of the many possible ways to approach dramatising a tale. After all, this is a made-up tale anyway, and so the theatre group has the latitude to fantasise further.²⁹

The experimental text of A Kraków Wedding deserves a separate discussion. The text is a record of the collective work of a specific group, starting from the collection of source materials, via discussions on plot development and stage design, to the description of the reactions of the audience to the final performance; it is at the same time a script for subsequent stagings. It is also an unfinished piece, since beyond the so-called wedding matters, which are described in detail, it contains blank spaces to be completed by text improvised by performers.³⁰

This programmatic opening of a text to acts of additional composition and alteration must be interpreted as an attempt to suspend control, undermine the strongly fixed position of an author, and open ground to those who are working on a specific production. The fewest examples of such specific descriptions of attempts to achieve this can be found in the texts by Antonina Sokolicz, but they leave no doubt as to her stance on the matter. In the debate about repertoire in proletarian theatre that was noted above, she opted for a combination of two divergent strategies: collective creative effort of a theatre company and the recourse to extant dramatic literature. Sokolicz wrote:

The possibility to create theatrical pieces collectively should not be precluded. At present, given the absence of texts that would be suitable for the mood of the masses, collective debates on the staging (performing on stage) of poetic works is, frankly, the only solution in this breakthrough period.³¹

Cierniak also discusses collective work on creating repertoire in detail in his articles, often referencing the need to “prepare” and “put on stage”³² all kinds of input material – not only rites and customs which had not been recorded previously, but also dramatic plays. In his article “Jak prowadzić próby teatralne” [“How to Conduct Rehearsals in Theatre”], he emphasises that work on a performance should begin not from the choice of the text but rather from work on a shared “intention”:

And only now, aware of the clear intention of the performance, we look for material either in literary texts, whether dramatic or not, or in rites, songs or folk tales, perhaps the performance has to be constructed from various raw materials, and perhaps it has to be spun entirely out of the self.³³

It is notable that Cierniak advocated the use of improvisation, or “spun out of the self”, which he also referred to “acting out of one’s own head”,³⁴ both at the stage of creating the script, during rehearsals and in each subsequent performance.

The strategies of creating text during rehearsals that was postulated and tested by Wandurski were inspired by writings of Platon Kerzhentsev, a theoretician of proletarian theatre, whose influence is also evident in Sokolicz’s project. In his book Творческий театр (1923, Creative Theatre, Kerzhentsev advocates reworking of old repertoire, changing original texts and “distorting” their intentions.³⁵ The concept of “distortion” is what Wandurski applies in his project, though he understands it as not just intervention into the text of a play, but also as a style of acting and, more broadly, as a takeover of power. He uses this category to review the history of European theatre from a point of view grounded in social class, paying particular attention to periods of transition when a ruling class begins to lose its power. It is then that:

the new viewer affects theatre not by means of a change in repertoire, but by introducing into the plays imposed on the viewer his or her own actor, who “distorts” the trajectory of theatre towards the needs of the viewer who selects it from his or her environment. Notably, the ideological “distortion” always takes the direction of parody, attack, caricature: laughter is here the only effective revolutionary weapon, with which the new viewer – by means of the new actor – not only destroys official ideology but conquers theatre for himself or herself. An actor who represents the class aims of the viewer – rather than the author-dramaturge – is the force which decides the character of a given theatre.³⁶

The final sentence aptly renders the key shift, set into the projects of communal theatre as discussed here, which occurs simultaneously in the artistic and social fields. The approach to drama, thus to the unique character of theatrical work, shared by these projects share is one in which the text to be delivered in the performance is decided upon only during rehearsals, so its authors are the company members. This centring of the actor-artist as a subject in communal theatre also results in a similar centring of the actor’s agency as a representative of his or her community. In Wandurski’s approach, the collective subject representing a social class takes control of the message, and the stage becomes the space where its power and agency are manifested.

Broader emancipatory aspirations and expanding the frontiers of collective creation constitute a core strand in reflections of these three creators on the relation of stage and audience as is evident in their writings. As did other theatre practitioners of the time, they criticised the consumerist attitude and entitlement mentality on the part of their contemporary viewers, yet they interpreted this attitude in other ways. To Sokolicz’s mind, bourgeois theatre had “lost its link with the audience – the link that fused audience and stage into one”;³⁷ for her, attempts undertaken by the theatre reformers were futile:

All in vain. The audience finds spiritual respite, fun and entertainment in theatre. All the while it remains passive.³⁸

Distinguishing two types of theatre, Cierniak discernibly kept his reserve when he described the audience of a professional repertory company as chance, casual and capricious.³⁹ To Cierniak:

audiences of professional theatre are mere recipients of stage art; they are not directly involved in the creation and performance of the show, and even if they are indirectly involved, it is only as a few individuals rather than as a united commune.⁴⁰

The manifestos and the practices of the artists in question abound in attempts to “bridge the gap between these two theatre camps”⁴¹ at different stages of work on the stage show, starting from the very creation of their repertoire. Cierniak manifestly emphasised that anyone wishing to write for the folk theatre:

ought to get to know the countryside through and through and to whole-heartedly embrace rural life with all its troubles and joys […]. One is supposed to frequent the country, to co-think and cohabit with it.⁴²

A similar necessity of becoming acquainted with the community and its living conditions was highlighted by Wandurski. To him, the actor:

cannot voluntarily become separated from production; on the contrary, the performer should remain as close to working-class life as possible.⁴³

One way of staying in touch with audiences at the Workers’ Stage and Lute was by conducting public rehearsals in a way that allowed any trade unionist to observe them.⁴⁴ The inclusion of viewers’ perspectives within the company took yet another shape, as chronicled by Wandurski:

Rehearsals are tedious and time-consuming. One brief piece requires a different approach of a director and yet another approach of an actor – subsequently, the results of their work are confronted by viewers: discussions on what affects them and what leaves them indifferent ensue, reactions of the working-class audiences to acting and staging are taken into consideration, and eventually the piece is worked on anew and ends up thoroughly refashioned.⁴⁵

Likewise, the Workers’ Stage and Lute was no stranger to open rehearsals: conducted by Sokolicz, trial performances of Tkacze [1920, Weavers] appear to have drawn considerable crowds.⁴⁶ The director was also on the lookout for other means of drawing actors and audiences closer:

Working-class theatre is supposed to reach out to its proletarian audiences, to professional organisations, and even to labour workshops. There, it may perhaps stage its shows without any recourse to set design, yet not because of lack of funds but of its own volition – based on the conviction that the stage set is secondary, if not gratuitous. Such a theatre will stage shows right in front of audiences, and even among audiences – even with them.⁴⁷

Sokolicz frequently highlighted the role of the working-class audience as a co-creator of such a theatre.⁴⁸

In ritual-like participation, abolishing by definition the division between active (actors) and passive (viewers), Cierniak found a model for inter-personal relations and engagement during performance. His how-to texts and scripts bristle with technical solutions to this. As he wrote:

There cannot be a partition between the audience and the stage, what we should do instead is to properly arrange and usher along the audience as well as including them through our stage work so as to make us all experience our togetherness, so that we all can share our joys and sorrows.⁴⁹

With a few exceptions, the audience is always set into the narrative plot of his scripts. This is how he describes the staging of the harvest festival:

Everyone involved is an active co-creator of the event. There is no division – God forbid! – between the acting (the observed) and the observing; like during a mass, with the entire congregation preoccupied with praying, so is the whole commune involved in the harvest festival.⁵⁰

The inclusion of audiences into stage activities also considerably affects the performative space, newly designed each time, custom-built to comply with the requirements of each show. In A Kraków Wedding, audience members turn into wedding guests invited by groomsmen, while dances take place all over the room.⁵¹ The Tale of the Wandering Soldier is staged outdoors, as if during a countryside meeting, with actors making their presence known among viewers.⁵²

The stage-to-audience relation is of utmost importance as regards the shows under consideration, for it concerns the positioning of the communal theatre and establishing its functions within a particular “commune”. The theatre is to become a space for “the removal of hateful contradictions”,⁵³ “taking collective pains”⁵⁴ and, finally, for shaping communal consciousness. Conspicuous here are differing calibration of emphasis as regards social issues among the theatre-makers under discussion: to both Wandurski and to Sokolicz, it was important to build a mutual understanding with audiences by making them aware of their class position and by convincing them to oppose inequality, and even in effect to topple the status quo. In contrast, Cierniak aimed to emancipate peasants within the system, hoping for its gradual transition. Differences aside, their projects share a common denominator: a staunch belief in the social efficacy of theatre and in its transformative potential. At the same time, they did not instrumentalise the art and did not harness it to social ends. Their work cannot be reduced merely to educational activities and dissemination of the stage arts.

The uniqueness and innovation of these concepts boils down to the ambitious fusion of political and artistic demands. As masterminded by Jędrzej Cierniak, Antonina Sokolicz and Witold Wandurski, communal theatre was to become a laboratory of people’s emancipation as well as a bottom-up tool in shaping a new political reality, and this was to be achieved by bold artistic experiments. These projects anticipate manifold strands in twentieth-century theatre history, such as collective creation, “on-stage writing”, and “devised theatre”. They can also be deemed an original domestic harbinger of future phenomena, including theatre of the oppressed, community theatre and participatory theatre, but it is also worth tracing the intentions of the creators of these ideas to see them for something more than that. After all, Sokolicz and Wandurski called for wide-ranging reforms in theatre of their day, while Cierniak perceived his people’s theatre as the germ of a new national theatre. In our day, returning to their dusty and scattered texts, to impudent, utopian aspirations inherent to them – often overly grandiose, and often surprisingly instructional – may lead to finding there in the history of Polish theatre an inspiring project towards its revival.

WORKS CITED:

Cierniak, Jędrzej, Wesele krakowskie, Inscenizacja obrzędów ludowych, opracowana z zespołem młodzieży szkolnej (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Związku Teatrów Ludowych, 1926)

Myśl teatralna polskiej awangardy 1919-1939: antologia, ed. by Stanisław Marczak-Oborski (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Artystyczne i Filmowe, 1973)

Sokolicz, Antonina, Juliusz Słowacki. Życie i dzieła poety (Poznań: Nakładem wydziału oświatowego “Straży”, 1909)

——“Sztuka a proletarjat”, [in:] Scena i Lutnia Robotnicza. Jednodniówka poświęcona zagadnieniom teatru robotniczego (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Sceny i Lutni Robotniczej, 1920)

[Sokolicz, Antonina], O kulturze artystycznej proletarjatu (Warsaw: Związek Zawodowy Pracowników Kolejowych Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej, 1921)

——“Stary a nowy teatr”, [in:] Scena i Lutnia Robotnicza. Jednodniówka poświęcona zagadnieniom teatru robotniczego (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Sceny i Lutni Robotniczej, 1920)

Szopka krakowska. Prymitywne widowisko kolendowe z tekstami, nutami i rycinami na podstawie polskich źródeł etnograficznych, ed. by Jędrzej Cierniak (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Związku Teatrów Ludowych, 1926)

Szacki, Maksymilian J., “Z rosyjskiej literatury teatrologicznej”, Życie teatru. Tygodnik, poświęcony polskiej kulturze teatralnej, 14 March 1926, no. 11

Teatry ludowe w Polsce. Dotychczasowy rozwój ruchu, możliwości ideowe i organizacyjne na przyszłość, eds. Adam Bień, Jędrzej Cierniak (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Związku Teatrów Ludowych, 1928)

Wodnarowa, Estera, Mieczysław Wodnar, Polskie sceny robotnicze 1918-1939. Wybór dokumentów i relacji (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1974)