Abstract
Anna R. Burzyńska analyses the most interesting phenomena in political theatre in Germany and Poland in the early 21st century. She proposes a periodization to describe the different generations of directors and playwrights, and shows how left-wing German theatre has affected the development of politically engaged theatre in Poland, comparntively pairing German-Polish artists who are most representative of contemporary trends: the deconstruction of bourgeois theatre (Frank Castorf – Monika Strzępka and Paweł Demirski), documentary theatre (Rimini Protokoll – Jan Klata), innovative use of new media (Gob Squad – Wojtek Ziemilski) and the search for new choral forms (Einar Schleef and Volker Lösch – Marta Górnicka).
Keywords
autobiography; chorus; collective creation; documentary theatre; german theatre; media; remix
Anna R. Burzyńska
(1979), PhD, assistant professor at the Department of Theatre and Drama of the Jagiellonian University’s Polish Studies Faculty. Her main research interests include recent European theatre and Polish and German drama from the 19th century to today, as well as the links between theatre and music. Also a theatre critic, since 2000 she has been joint editor of Didaskalia journal, and between 2004 and 2010 was a reviewer for the magazine Tygodnik Powszechny. Has published Mechanika cudu. Strategie metateatralne w polskiej dramaturgii awangardowej (2005), The Classics and the Troublemakers. Theatre Directors from Poland (2008), Maska twarzy. Twórczość dramatyczna Stanisława Grochowiaka (2011) and Małe dramaty. Teatralność liryki Stanisława Grochowiaka (2012). Has curated with the Goethe Institute and Cricoteka Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor, both in Kraków, and worked as a dramaturge with Stefan Kaegi and Lars Jan.
email: annaroza.burzynska@uj.edu.pl
