Nikolina Holuk 17126444

Theater Festival – Case Study 1.

As an artist, he followed the straight path from constructivism and dadaism, through surrealism, to

conceptual art. However, Kantor's later activities - fascination with happening or the last strand in his work,

which was the 'Theater of Death - changed the perception of contemporary theater. Tadeusz Kantor was not

only an unconventional artist but also a painter who repainted the imagination of viewers, saturating it with

unforgettable images, anxieties, and premonitions. Later in his life, he concluded:” Whatever it is theatre, or

painting, or drawing, or book – it all comes into being in a strange way, and I can do anything. You cannot

say ‘Theatre ends here and painting begins here’. To me, it is all the same”(Pleśniarowicz 2001:87). In light

of modern times, ignorance and constant hastiness, do people have time to consider the meaning of death?

Did the "Theater of Death" survive despite the loss of its creator? The meaning of death is an individual

thing. Stepping into this sensitive topic may be inappropriate and offensive for some people. As human

beings in terms of modernization, it is easy to forget about valuable issues in life. Career and money took

over control and became a priority. The religion slowly passes away into oblivious, more often it is

considered as just literature basics which are no longer practice in human lives. Based on that, there is no

perspective to reflect on the one thing which is not even close to our reality. Theater of Death is a very

specific form of art that is unique due to Kantor’s hard work. It is said that the Polish Theatre of dDeath was

born on 31 October 1901 with the world premiere of Mickiewicz's Forefathers' Eve directed by Stanisław

Wyspiański (Pleśniarowicz 1994:19). Nevertheless, this timeless piece exemplifies Polish culture, traditions,

hopes - moreover, the text is symbolic and open for individual interpretation including religious beliefs.

Clearly, repetition and memory give a chance to be saved. Kantor, who strongly felt the lack of spirituality

of modern times, who was terrified by civilization processes, sought to save himself through art, save the

individual. Kosiński (2019:125) said that in contrast to Mickiewicz's work, Kantor's activities in the theatre

were to destroy death as a form shrouded in idealization, gravestones, and epitaphs while instead,

paradoxically, reviving decay and restoring the reality of a chaotic absence. People's nature is to adapt to the

1
surrounding environments, so whatever was modern and suitable for Kantor then, it will have a different

meaning now.

Polish history, and later on politic has a huge impact on his work and interpretation of the meaning of death.

It is important to mention that his first performances - "Orpheus" by Jean Cocteau, "Balladina" by Juliusz

Słowacki or "Return of Odysseus" by Stanisław Wyspiański – were made during the Second World War for

underground theater and presented in private apartments. It is because, when World War II broke out, it was

developed in the interwar period, and especially in the 1930s by the state patronage. The concept of the state

as the mother's institution strengthened national unity and identity. The policy of the state-supported artistic

circles, contributing to the increased activity of the numerous circles and institutions being created. With the

fall of the state, the policies of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were to lead to the total destruction of

the culture, intellectual and artistic elite of the country and the roots of all creative activity. This meant

undermining all the institutions and schemes that had been developed during the interwar period, i.e. the end

of state patronage and all organizations and creative associations, the end of artistic education and the

activities of theaters, museums, and galleries. The occupiers plundered or destroyed a significant part of the

Polish cultural and historical heritage, at the same time persecuting and murdering members of the Polish

cultural elite. Nazi terror affected all artists regardless of their artistic attitudes; representatives of the avant-

garde as well as of colorism and traditional trends fell victim to this terror. Despite the fact that in occupied

Poland, the artists lost all material grounds for practicing art, artistic creativity continued throughout all the

years of war. Art was practiced in the Polish Underground-State and in the underground, including in private

apartments, in the face of the risk of persecution, arrest or execution. The two themes of death and memory

permeated Kantor’s theatre material until the end of his life. It is arguable that living and attempting to work

in the occupied city during the Second World War was instrumental in leading him toward what is respect

for death and memory. (Witts, 2019:11) It is no chance to deeply understand the feeling and recreate pieces

with the same or even similar intentions. Due to Kantor's work, history will survive and the new generation

can get important knowledge about those harsh times. Indeed, Theater of Death will supply all emotions as a

type of performance, and it will tell the story about those people who lost lives during War, but Kantor was

the one who survived the War, and he put to those performances authentic emotions and without him, the

intentions will be unconsciously changed.

2
After the war, in spite of the current socialist realism, Kantor took up surreal painting, and also returned to

the theater, creating with the group of friends, artists from Krakow - the 'Cricot 2' theater. The 'Cricot 2'

company was in some ways an extension of Kantor’s wartime Independent Theater, composed as it was of

artists, actors, musicians, and poets (Witts, 2019:15). Poland was a country ruined by war, living a rhythm of

deep trauma and mourning, as well as subject to political changes and population movements. It was also a

time marked by the great will to live and the euphoria of reconstruction. As in the beginning, the hunger for

modernity returned among artists during the interwar period, and at the same time the question of what

modernity was supposed to look like in art and what language was adequate to the trauma and war tragedy.

They also asked whether 1945 should be a zero year, starting everything anew, or whether it is possible to

return to the pre-war art, elaborately worked out throughout the interwar period. Artists did not know how to

find themselves in post-war reality, and above all what the role of art should be now. Undoubtedly, during

the war and just after it - art was not created for aesthetic reasons, but mainly for existential reasons,

especially in the orbit of impending Stalinist time. Witts (2019:15) said that Kantor made an extraordinary

denunciation of Stalin’s activities and his management of the Communist Party, after which there was a

slow soft-ending of artistic censorship. Most artists in deformation and breaking shapes saw the only way to

post-war imaging of the world in visual arts and just like Tadeusz Kantor, who preached in his writings

I have more confidence in such a situation. Any new era always begins with actions of little apparent
significance and little note, incidents having little in common with the recognized trend, actions that are
private, intimate, I would even say-shameful. Vague. And difficult! These are the most fascinating and
essential moments of creativity. (Kobiałka, 1986:141)

Those times shaped his artistic style, those times pushed him to step into an unknown form of art. He

decided to add mannequins to his performances. Those were like wax figures, existed on the margins of art.

For him, it was already a message of death and a model for an actor (Kobiałka, 1986:142). Kantor did not

agree with the idea of Craig and Kleist, according to which the actor can be replaced by a mannequin, he

was fascinated by the potential of these artificial, created entities - in his opinion that could best reflect the

ideas of the Theater of Death. Mannequins were, therefore, a tool that through the relationship with death,

were to be a model for a live actor. As Kantor said in an interview with Krzysztof Miklaszewski (2002:37):

"The mannequin in my theater is to become a model through which a strong sense of death and the condition

of the dead passes". The time is still for mannequins but this is also a keyword to receive the masterpieces of
3
the Theater of Death. Kantor's concept of time is an idea of moments and a collage of memories. The

author's memory is incomplete, its dialogue with imagination and history. The artist examines human

identity in the face of fall and humiliation. The border point is war. It is not easy to explain this strange and

unusual time, hard from memories. The fragmentary nature of the script and the spoken issues conceal the

traces of birth and death; the artist is looking for the truth about the past, wants to reach the mystery of the

world. Kantor's genius manifested itself in a huge, titanic consequence, in the ability to reach the recipient

by taking him deep into his own memory, in building from scraps of thoughts and crumbs of memories

understandable and close to every man's images. In showing the taste of absurdity and the possibility of

freedom in art. As time is passed, the world moved forward, only the small things left like books, art, videos

from his performances and people who had an opportunity to meet Kantor in person. Nothing can be done to

keep this theatre alive. There is no access to his brain. He developed his ideas on stage and it is impossible

to counterfeit - it will not be the same. Kantor was a young artist who could not express himself in his own

country. For example, watching the "dead class" written by Tadeusz Kantor, but acted by Second Year of

Drama Students at the University of South Wales remains in memory - from some of its sequences, it will

probably be difficult to get rid of at all and even if Kantor was not there, the story has been told, by young

artists who did not experience dramatic moments in reality. It was a good lesson of history, but except for

original text, he wrote - there were no other elements of the theater of death. Even if they did not use

mannequins, the story stimulates reflection on how lucky we are these days.

Despite this, it is possible to look at Tadeusz Kantor's theater as theology in theatrical action. From the

theological point of view, the history of European theater is the history of an increasing distance between

man and God. However, the memory of theater theology in action - the memory of medieval theater - has

never faded away. It can be pointed to artists who creatively and invigoratingly reach for the code developed

in the Middle Ages. This does not mean that they perform liturgical dramas, mysteries or morality plays.

However, they are looking for a thread, a relationship between man and God, which has not been finally

broken, even if God appears as a certain Absence. In Kantor’s performances, the main theme is death,

transience, memory. He participated in many of them directly as a "master of ceremonies" - always present

on stage, watching closely, intervening when necessary. Kantor was constantly looking for new solutions

and although he often fails, which was common on official stages, he also gets to know the taste of victory,

4
which was rare by the time. Since his death, it is impossible to fully recreate performances. No one could

ever replace his position as a creator on stage and even if someone tries to reach for Kantor pieces, it can be

only shown and act with all details based on academic research they find. But the spirit of the original

theater of death gone with its creator. He also uses intertextuality, draws not only from the literature, but

also from the images of artists of different eras: the pale faces of old people and the waxiness of their bodies,

it is the transfer of the whiteness of the faces of infant babies Velázquez, and in the game of black and white,

there is a fascination with Malevich's abstraction. The black square on the White background, in which,

according to the playwright, hides mysticism: the square and the white are a reality, and both elements

interact with each other, in the language of religion the square is God, the basic figure in geometry. These

days, religion is not as fundamental as it was before, it is losing meaning and sense of using it in modern

performances. It is considered as a theme rather than personal feelings. Religion always was part of an

artistic world but the concept of death especially includes all beliefs.

Tadeusz Kantor as an artist of the end of the 20th century is someone through whom the anxiety of modern

times speaks. He let the whole world to step into his brain, into his memories. His life was reconstructed on

stage.

Wielopole thus replicates and lays bare the mechanism of the Theater of Death. Like The Death Class, it
remains a seance of darkness and cruelty, of futile memory and empty death. Bringing the dying ‘ childhood
room’ back to life, it still relies on the suggestiveness of non-statement, a sometimes ambiguity that drags
the action into a ‘powerless uproar’ and creates the appearance of disorder. But the essence of the play lies
elsewhere: in fragments of tragic structure and in Biblical and national symbolism in collision with ‘the
lowest of the mundane’ and underpinned with the stereotype. (Pleśniarowicz, 2004:244)

Kantor feels called to cross the boundaries of eternal and unfashionable fear of the unknown, of nothingness,

of emptiness, as well as fear of remembering the past. Kantor saw the source of all the crises in our part of

the world in not respecting his memory. He gives such a history lesson. In theater, memory is the only player

in the game, it balances on the border between the vitality of today and the lifetime of what was yesterday.

The family became the main collective hero of the Remembrance Theater. Symbolic props - crosses or

Torah - did not express the author's beliefs, but were signs of culture. Theater of the Death imagery was

saturated with violence, visions of extermination and genocide, the story was entangled in a cantor

symbolism network. The most important thing for the artist is to cross the limits of existence and death.

5
Kantor did it successfully. Theater of death will survive as a sample of a specific type of art but it will never

be understandable with the intentions and emotions of its creator.

6
Bibiography:

Kobiałka, M. (1986) The Writings of Tadeusz Kantor 1956-1985.

The Drama Review: TDR Vol. 30, No. 3. The MIT Press. Cambridge. [Online] Available at:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1145754?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents (Accessed: 01.01.2020)

Kosiński, D. (2019) Performing Poland, Rethinking histories and theatres, Aberystwyth, Performance Book.

Miklaszewski, K. (2002) Encounters with Tadeusz Kantor. Psychology Press. Routledge. London.

Pleśniarowicz, K. (1994) Teatr nie ludzkiej formy ( The Theatre of In-Human Form), Kraków, Univeritas.

Pleśniarowicz, K. (2004) The Dead Memory Machine: Tadeusz Kantor’s Theatre of Death. Trans. William

Brand.Aberystwyth: Black Mountain Press.