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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword by Kathleen Cioffi
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction
- Part I Our Auschwitz: Grotowski's Akropolis
- Part II Our Memory: Kantor's Dead Class
- Chapter 22 Tadeusz Kantor: A Very Short Introduction
- Chapter 23 Dead Class: The Making of the Legend
- Chapter 24 Dead Class in Poland
- Chapter 25 The Polish History Lesson
- Chapter 26 Dead Class Abroad
- Chapter 27 On Not Knowing Polish, Again
- Chapter 28 The Visual and the Puerile
- Chapter 29 The National and the Transnational
- Chapter 30 Witkiewicz's Tumor
- Chapter 31 An Age of Genius: Bruno Schulz and the Return to Childhood
- Chapter 32 Conversing with Gombrowicz: The Dead, the Funny, the Sacred and the Profane
- Chapter 33 Panirony: “A pain with a smile and a shrug”
- Chapter 34 Raising the Dead
- Chapter 35 Dead Class as Kaddish…
- Chapter 36 Dead Class as Dybbuk, or the Absence
- Chapter 37 The Dead and the Marionettes
- Chapter 38 Men and Objects
- Chapter 39 Dead Class as Forefathers' Eve
- Chapter 40 Dead Class: The Afterlife
- Postscript
- Appendix
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 27 - On Not Knowing Polish, Again
from Part II - Our Memory: Kantor's Dead Class
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword by Kathleen Cioffi
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction
- Part I Our Auschwitz: Grotowski's Akropolis
- Part II Our Memory: Kantor's Dead Class
- Chapter 22 Tadeusz Kantor: A Very Short Introduction
- Chapter 23 Dead Class: The Making of the Legend
- Chapter 24 Dead Class in Poland
- Chapter 25 The Polish History Lesson
- Chapter 26 Dead Class Abroad
- Chapter 27 On Not Knowing Polish, Again
- Chapter 28 The Visual and the Puerile
- Chapter 29 The National and the Transnational
- Chapter 30 Witkiewicz's Tumor
- Chapter 31 An Age of Genius: Bruno Schulz and the Return to Childhood
- Chapter 32 Conversing with Gombrowicz: The Dead, the Funny, the Sacred and the Profane
- Chapter 33 Panirony: “A pain with a smile and a shrug”
- Chapter 34 Raising the Dead
- Chapter 35 Dead Class as Kaddish…
- Chapter 36 Dead Class as Dybbuk, or the Absence
- Chapter 37 The Dead and the Marionettes
- Chapter 38 Men and Objects
- Chapter 39 Dead Class as Forefathers' Eve
- Chapter 40 Dead Class: The Afterlife
- Postscript
- Appendix
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Dead Class was not just Kantor's breakthrough, but unequivocally one of the most transformative theatrical events of the late 1970s, one of only a few theatrical pieces that captured the spirit of the century. Peter Brook famously said: “Dead Class was a great shock for me. This play contains the suffering of all of Europe. I think that theatre is nothing more than an attempt to condense everything in existence. Dead Class was just that: the experience of humanity condensed in one image.” Writing about Wielopole, Wielopole three years after the New York premiere of Dead Class, Margaret Croyden summarizes Kantor's impact on the international theatre scene:
[Kantor's] work is popular; he has played in almost every capital of the world, winning more than 15 international prizes and awards, and enjoying a splendid reputation. […] Those who see it experience something very special, painful perhaps, or astonishing, but an artistic phenomenon which cannot easily be dismissed or forgotten.
Despite the impact of Dead Class on the contemporary avant-garde (from Richard Foreman to Robert Wilson to Krystian Lupa), there's a surprising lack of in-depth scholarship about this work. The universal Kantor appealed to twentieth-century universal tastes and anxieties, but the Polish Kantor, like one of his vagabond artists, carried with him the entire baggage of national trauma and psychosis, the “hollow and sneering” laughter of his generation's ghosts.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Post-traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and KantorHistory and Holocaust in 'Akropolis' and 'Dead Class', pp. 204 - 208Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2012