Power in WeaknessMusicals in Poland under Communism Jacek Mikolajczyk (bio) On June 11, 1987, Pope John Paul II visited Gdynia, a major Polish port city by the Baltic Sea. Over 500,000 people assembled at Gdynia’s main square to meet him. A mass celebrated by John Paul II was broadcast all over the world. The government tried to undermine the importance of the event, but officials overlooked one important detail, which eventually contributed to its subsequent symbolic meaning. Adjacent to the square, there was a huge sign on the façade of the building of Gdynia’s Musical Theater advertising its most recent production. All over the world people saw pictures of the pope in the center of a city in communist Poland addressing a crowd beneath a string of large glittering letters spelling out the words “Jesus Christ Superstar!” This is how the world came to see that Broadway musicals were in fact being produced in the People’s Republic of Poland.1 Arguably, few people would expect musicals to be produced in communist countries.2 Musicals are a uniquely American genre, deeply rooted in an American system of commercial theatre, and communist regimes were typically anti-American. The government, having introduced proactive censorship after World War II, had all the means to control the culture in the country. Moreover, in the People’s Republic of Poland there was no free theatrical market as all theatres were run by the state. If musicals were to make it to the stage, the government must have approved or at least tolerated the musical as a genre. The conundrum is why the government would allow and tolerate such productions. An answer to this question presents a paradox. The power of the musical in Poland resided in its weakness. American musicals were staged in operetta theatres and, accordingly, they were regarded by the authorities [End Page 77] and members of the theatre industry as a relic of the old days of nineteenth-century operetta. This kind of theatre was tolerated only because of its popularity among less educated spectators, and it was largely scorned both by theatre artists and politicians. On the other hand, this is exactly why musical theatre artists sometimes had more artistic freedom than directors of more respected productions in dramatic theatres. Since musical productions seemed less serious, the government control was much less strict in their case. As it turned out, while resistance against the government grew and censors were increasing their pressure on dramatic theatre, there were far more productions that conveyed meaningful political attitudes in musical theatre. Interestingly, the musical genre was only introduced to Polish theatres because of the political change that accompanied the fall of the Stalinist dictatorship early in the history of communist Poland. In 1956, the so-called “Thaw,” announced in the Soviet Union by Nikita Khrushchev, coincided in Poland with both the death of Bolesław Bierut, a leader of the regional Communist Party, and the first mutiny of Polish laborers in Poznań. Władysław Gomułka, one of the leaders of Polish communists during the 1930s, became the new First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party. His regime was much more liberal than the previous one. Censorship was loosened and culture in the country opened up to the West. Generally speaking, for eleven years following World War II, Poland was separated from the West; hence, it is not surprising to find Polish artists and consumers abruptly trying to catch up with recent developments in Western culture. In numerous theatres, plays by Beckett, Ionesco, and Sartre were staged, and the very availability of Western works encouraged managers of operetta theatres to look around the world’s stages. In 1956, the Everymen Opera Company visited Warsaw with their production of Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin, DuBose Heyward, and Ira Gershwin. It was probably the first visit of an American theatre group in Poland, and both audience and critics welcomed it as a sensational event. In the following year, Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate opened at the Comedy Theatre in Warsaw.3 This first production of the American musical sparked a veritable wave of Broadway musicals...
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Jun 1, 2015
Urszula Szulakowska 
Open Access