Theatre
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Kartoteka
Tadeusz Różewicz · 1960
Synopsis
The Hero, an ordinary-looking middle-aged man, lies on a bed in a room that a street runs through. Characters, some known and some unknown, pass near him in silence or speak to him: his father and mother still see in him the seven-year-old boy who pinches sugar, a journalist wakes him to interview a “simple citizen”, and a chorus of three old men seated to one side lectures him and recites a romantic ode that clashes with his life. A former partisan, he changes name and age from one scene to the next.
Context
Written in 1958 and 1959, the play appeared in 1960 in the journal Dialog, in a censored version; the full text did not enter a volume until 1972. It was premiered on 25 March 1960 at the Teatr Dramatyczny in Warsaw, in a production by Wanda Laskowska. The author spoke of an open dramaturgy, which anyone could enter, adding a fragment or an ending. The play caused controversy, then was rehearsed in New York, Stockholm, Copenhagen and West Berlin, where the Schiller Theater made it a great success.
Who it is for
A play without a continuous plot, made of detached scenes that the author wanted open to rewriting.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of its author's highest achievements and as a manifesto of his generation; long read in schools.
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