Contents:
Plays
Isle of the Skinny
Karolina Maciejaszek
The author deals with the topic of trauma and post-memory, talking about a former prisoner of the children's camp from the perspective of his daughter, both as a little girl and an adult woman. The father is constantly returning to his memories and acting out cruel camp games in the family, while his daughter tries to deal with it. The tragic, scarcely known history of the labour camp created in the city of Łódź ghetto area returns in simple scenes demonstrating the theatrical quality of mechanisms of violence. In the moving epilogue the old Survivors appear, remaining mentally on their "isle of children" like Peter Pan.
Harvest Festival
Jarosław Jakubowski
An apocalyptic national drama, with references to Polish classics, Wyspiański's Wedding and Mickiewicz’s Forefathers' Eve. The great harvest festival brings together people from all walks of life, representing different worldviews. Their conversations reflect both the latest headlines and modern customs. The guests are having fun, quarreling and drinking, but for a mysterious reason they cannot leave the party. Eventually they realize that this is the final harvest, that they participate in the End of the World. The comedy of manners turns into a morality play and it ends with the vision of a great funnel that consumes everybody.
God Waits at the Station
Maya Arad Yasur
Eight heroes living in Israel are trying to figure out who the pregnant woman whose life ended in a suicide attack in a restaurant was. What was her life like in the Palestinian camp? What was her growing up like and what made her a religious fanatic? Who is responsible for the tragedy and what is the responsibility of those who have neglected the recommendations of the police state?
Essays, Studies
The Ladder of Harm, Envy and Oblivion
Justyna Kowalska-Leder
On the title page of The Isle of the Skinny, Karolina Maciejaszek included the information that it was inspired by the history of the camp in Przemysłowa Street in Łódź. This camp was isolated from the area of the ghetto with a high wooden fence in December 1942. Officially, it was intended to perform a kind of reformatory for juvenile delinquents between the ages of twelve and sixteen. However, even two-year-olds from the General Government area and other Polish territories included in the Third Reich were imprisoned there.
Performance
Diana Taylor Performance
Two chapters from the book Performance, published by Duke University Press in 2016 - about new uses of performance and the research discipline of performance studies.
Performance. The Archive of a Conflict and the Archive of a Utopia
Joanna Krakowska, Piotr Morawski
The Man First
Magda Lipska
On the genealogy of performance from the spirit of Open Form by Oskar Hansen. The visual arts practiced by Hansen and his students, transferred from the field of education to the field of artistic practice, initiated the activities of Galerie Repassage, run by Hansen’s former students, the first artistic space devoted to the art of events. The gallery, operating between 1972 and 1981, was located in the Krakowskie Przedmiescie Street, in the immediate vicinity of the University of Warsaw and vis-à-vis the Academy of Fine Arts.
Esthetics of Speech
Beata Popczyk-Szczęsna
In contemporary practice of writing theatre plays, the traditional dramatic form is generally uncertain, and in the hands of efficient authors, it is constantly being decomposed and transformed into a type of expression compiled from many stylistic layers and consisting of dramatic, lyrical and epic passages. If the way contemporary plays are composed is far from the conventional word architecture of drama, and so is the once dominant form – dramatic dialogue. It is no longer an exchange of thoughts and arguments, sketching the interaction of characters, or a carrier of the conflict.
A Peasant in Chains or What Do We Need the Folk For?
Waldemar Kuligowski
The author's intention is not to analyze the concept of grange and to examine its adequacy in relation to modern corporations. On the other hand, the main goal is to show a new use of the folk. Folk culture has become a negative reference point, a repository of embarrassing or scandalous traits and habits. New recognitions and reinterpretations of Polish folk history allow us to broaden our knowledge, to rethink our Sarmatian heritage, to undertake studies on the gender dimension of serfdom, as well as the practices of exploiting animals in the peasant economy.
Blogs
Maciej Tomaszewski
Bloggers - the phenomenon of contemporary culture. They usually do not have the expertise in any of the area they write on, but they are capable of influencing decisions of thousands of readers. People whose fame and success is expressed in four numbers – readers, views, fans and subscribers. Their kingdom consists of a blog, Facebook, Instagram and Youtube. They write about all aspects of culture - from cooking, fashion and travel through games, the media, technology, movies, comics, alcohols to family and life tips.
Columns
Pedro Pereira, Tadeusz Nyczek, Marek Beylin
Varia
CONTEXTS:
Olga Byrska on the artist’s obligations on the margin of Bonnie Maranca’s editorial The Artist in the World, "Performing Arts Journal" 115 (2017).
Notes on plays:
Miloš Nikolić Osamnaest Mačaka i Limar Herman Brun; Joël Pommerat Ca ira (!) Fin de Louis; Polina Żeriebowa Dniewnik Żeriebcowoj Poliny