The Polish Shakespearean stage in the post-transformational era

Abstract

The Shakespearean stage productions after 1989 reflected social, political and economic changes in the rapidly transforming Polish reality, which gave rise to a modern type of audience whose sensitivity was shaped by popular music, cinema, digital media and the mass culture. Contemporary Polish directors (Jan Klata, Maja Kleczewska, Grzegorz Jarzyna, Krzysztof Warlikowski) recognized that modernity and tradition can (and should) be combined onstage and that canonical texts can express new meanings in new forms. The new approach to the audience and the canon led to the development of the new aesthetics representing the ‘postdramatic theatre’. The new aesthetics gave new rights to the directors; for example, Maja Kleczewska set her Macbeth in a criminal underworld of the Polish mafia in the 1990s, imbuing her production with kitschy costumes and pop culture symbols. For the same reason, Jan Klata located his H. in the Gdansk shipyard, the birthplace of ‘Solidarity’, infusing his adaptation with the music of The Doors, Metallica and U2. In my analysis of the Polish Shakespearean stage in the post-transformational era, I offer a short overview of some key trends in dramaturgical aesthetics and the directors’ approaches to the adaptation of Shakespeare’s drama to the stage in the 1990s and 2000s. Next, I discuss in more detail the ‘postdramatic’ aesthetics of the modern Shakespeare adaptations based on the examples of two chosen artists, Maja Kleczewska and Jan Klata.