Beta version
Write to us 
21 November 2009

Main page

Polish Culture in the World Polish Cultural Institutes
important links Ministry of Culture and National Heritage - Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych

Publisher:
Adam Mickiewicz Institute
ul. Mokotowska 25
00-560 Warsaw
tel. (+48 22) 44 76 100
fax (+48 22) 44 76 152
www.iam.pl 
about us  redakcja@culture.pl  order newsletter 
Sławomir Mrożek
languages: Polish  / English  / French  / German 
 

Sławomir Mrożek, playwright, author of many short stories, satiric writer, columnist and essayist, born in 1930.

His dramas show the simplest situations, human behaviours matching the scheme. He uncovers them in their comicality and their absurd. The most important plays he created before emigrating in 1963 to France and then to Mexico, are: "The Police", "The Turkey", "Karol" and "The Game". His most famous play "The Tango", a biological and psychological observation of creation of totalitarian mechanisms, the play, which made him internationally famous, was staged for the first time in 1965.

"The Emigrants", Mrożek's second most staged play, was written abroad. This play is a study of two different forms of exclusion, juxtaposing idealistic patterns of thinking of a political emigrant with the sane sense of a simple emigrant, who left his country for money. In the 1980, in texts like "The Ambassador" or "The Portrait", Mrożek continued his laboratory research on characters, concentrating more and more on their psychology and using them to present historical and political mechanisms.

In the 1990's Mrożek mainly wrote three plays: "Love in Crimea" about the fall of the Russian empire, "The Beautiful Sight", the image of the Balkan War from the perspective of two Europeans carelessly spending their holiday at the seaside in one of the countries of the former Yugoslavia, and "The Reverends", a humorous analysis of religious hypocrisy. All three plays provide an image of the last decade of the 20th century, of war, disintegration of values, of a system based on genocide. Even though these are very important subjects, Mrożek does not present them directly but he twists them. The war becomes an annoyance to the tourists, the chaos of the last days of the totalitarianism is irresistibly funny, and the reverends become a sitcom in a twisted mirror. All this, because Mrozek recognises the contemporary reality through laughter.

Selected stagings of Mrożek's plays:
  • 1965 - "The Tango" in the Old Theatre in Krakow, directed by Jerzy Jarocki
  • 1975 - "The Butchery" in the Dramatic Theatre in Warsaw, directed by Jerzy Jarocki
  • 1994 - "Love in Crimea" in the Contemporary Theatre in Warsaw, directed by Erwin Axer
  • 1997 - "The Tango" in the Contemporary Theatre in Warsaw, directed by Maciej Englert
  • 1998 - "Mrożek's History of People's Republic of Poland" in the Polish Theatre in Wrocław, directed by Jerzy Jarocki

To see the selected bibliography of Sławomir Mrożek go to www.polska2000.pl

See also Michał Bujanowicz's essay: "Sławomir Mrożek - Playwright".

back to top
Browsing history




VIDEO COVERAGE  PHOTO COVERAGE  PAINTING  GRAPHIC ART  DRAWING  PHOTOGRAPHY  PORTRAITS 
RECENTLY ADDED
Kwadrofonik at Crossculture Festival
The European Film Academy (EFA) has announced its choice of international EFA Ambassadors. Among the selected distinguished personalities from the world of European film there is Maciej Stuhr. The Polish actor will represent EFA and the European Film Awards at various prestigious events.
The Berlin Maxim Gorki Theatre will show Heinrich von Kleist's "Amphitryon", directed by Jan Bosse (November 19, 2009) and Fritz Kater's "Haeven", directed by Armin Petras (November 21, 2009) at Stary Teatr in Cracow. The shows are part of the collaboration between the two theatres, called "Wanderlust".
18th History Book Fairs will take place on November 26 - Novemer 29, 2009, in Warsaw. The inauguratory press conference "History Book Fairs - the new beginning" starts on November 23, 2009 at 12:00 p.m. in Kubicki Arcades at the Royal Castle.
40 short documentary films from 11 countries have been qualified for competition in the 13th International Film Festival "Off Cinema". The Festival starts on November 18, 2009, in Poznań.
The former headquarters of the Polish United Workers' Party's Central Comitee, a monumetal building located in downtown Warsaw, near the de Gaulle traffic circle, was on November 16, 2009, inscribed on the list of registered monuments of the Masovian Voivodeship.
On November 13, 2009, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Bohdan Zdrojewski, signed an agreement, according to which the Ministry shall co-fund the construction of the Centre of Applied Arts and Innovation Centre at the Academy of Fine Arts.
© Copyright by Instytut Adama Mickiewicza. All rights reserved - unless stated otherwise - including the rights of authors and the publisher. No further distribution of articles or other materials contained on the www.culture.pl website is permitted without the publisher's consent.
www.culture.pl ISSN 1734-0624 Nr 2882 | www.iam.pl
implementation: www.ornak.pl | design: Marek Zalejski / Studio Q
SITE MAP