Description
Book SynopsisGrzegorz Niziolek's The Polish Theatre of the Holocaust is a pioneering analysis of the impact and legacy of the Holocaust on Polish theatre and society from 1945 to the present. It reveals the role of theatre as a crucial medium of collective memory and collective forgetting of the trauma of the Holocaust carried out by the Nazis on Polish soil. The period gave rise to two of the most radical and influential theatrical ideas during work on productions that addressed the subject of the Holocaust, Grotowski's Poor Theatre and Kantor's Theatre of Death, but the author examines a deeper impact in the role that theatre played in the processes of collective disavowal to being a witness to others' suffering.
In the first part, the author examines six decades of Polish theatre shaped by the perspective of the Holocaust in which its presence is variously visible or displaced. Particular attention is paid to the various types of distortion and the effect of wr
Trade Review
Niziolek’s book prompts its readers to profoundly question and engage with the issue of agency, from an ethical as well as a theatrical standpoint ... This book provides a rich and highly thought-provoking reading experience. * Pamietnik Teatralny *
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction Part I The Holocaust and the Theatre 1. A Theatre of Gapers 2. Who was not in Auschwitz? 3. Playing the Jew 4. Wrongly Seen 5. Without Mourning Part II The Theatre and the Holocaust 6. This Shameful Jewish War 7. What is Unthinkable in Poland 8. A Crushed Audience 9. Archive of the Missing Image 10. Duplicitous Spectator, Helpless Spectator Notes Bibliography
