(A)pollonia

Twenty-First Century Polish Drama and Texts for the Stage

Edited by Krystyna Duniec, Joanna Klass and Joanna Krakowska

Out of Print

 

6 x 7.5 inches , 416pp with 35 b/w photographs April 2014

ISBN : 9780857421784

Rs  950.00 (PB)
$45.00 (PB)
£31.50 (PB)

Questioning the ethics of historical narratives and the construction of national identities, this anthology explores, in innovative language, the trauma of war, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, reappraisals of the post-communist reality and cultural complexes in Poland from perspectives of gender, postcolonialism and the economy. The 11 plays are grouped under four heads: ‘Polin’, which addresses national loss since the Holocaust through discourses on victimhood and guilt; ‘Transpolonia’, which takes up Poland’s difficult post-war relations with Germany; ‘Postpolonia’, which examines social metamorphoses since the political transformation of 1989 through the prism of the body; and ‘Lack-of-Polonia’, which reveals the immediate needs among Polish families and youth since the nation’s transition to free-market economy and its often-unfulfilled promises. Krzysztof Warlikowski’s acclaimed production, (A)pollonia, which uses of excerpts from Greek tragedies, novels by Jonathan Littell and J. M. Coetzee and reportage by Hanna Krall, provides the title for the anthology as it encapsulates the key subjects, conflicts and dilemmas prominent in the Polish theatre of the last decade.

 

The substantive introduction to the anthology provides the historical and political framework for the collected texts, the foreword explains the scope of the international collaboration that produced the translations in this volume, while the accompanying DVD shows select scenes from the original Polish productions.

 

Krystyna Duniec is professor in the Theater Department of the Institute of Art at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. She is the author of several books including the recently published The Body in Theatre: An Anthropological Perspective (2012).

 

Joanna Klass is a senior theater expert at Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw. She is an independent curator of multidisciplinary projects including the co-curated Polish Theatre in Moscow festival at Golden Mask, 2011, collaborations with Getty Center, UCLA Live, REDCAT, Grotowski Institute, Warsaw Bauhaus and other independent, practice-driven, creative organizations.

 

Joanna Krakowska is assistant professor in the Theatre Department of The Institute of Art at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. She is the deputy editor of Dialog, a Polish journal devoted to modern theatre and drama, and the author of a biography of the Polish actress and activist Mikołajska: Theatre and Communist Poland (2011).

 

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