Contemporary Fears. Plays that Received Awards in 2023 Drama Competition “Contact Zones” against the Tradition of Romanticism
Contemporary Fears. Plays that Received Awards in 2023 Drama Competition “Contact Zones” against the Tradition of Romanticism

Summary/Abstract: This article presents an analysis of three plays that received awards in the 2023 Contact Zones playwriting competition organised by the Wrocław Maria and Edmund Wier-ciński Contemporary Theatre and the City of Wrocław. These were Ignacy Karpowicz’s Roz-mowy mijane [Passing Conversations] (the main prize), Zenon Fajfer’s Uwolnienie [Release] and Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk’s Dziennik szału i chciwości [Diary of Frenzy and Greed] (which received two out of four prizes, which are the equivalent of the honourable mention). These works differ in how they depict the world, the form of the message, how they construct and objectify anxiety, but also in terms of the game played with the tradition of Romanticism, an epoch of special importance in Polish culture and remembered in many ways in 2022, which the Polish Parliament designated the Year of Polish Romanticism. Thus, these works feature characters of unclear ontological status, ghosts, phantoms and wraiths (Dziennik szału i chciwości, Rozmowy mijane), drawing attention to the uncanny and phenomena that elude human reason, quotations from Romantic works and various allusions. The Romantic context is not always recorded in these plays. Then they are kinds of genologi-cal memories of the dramas, reservoirs of specific themes and ways of expressing them, and specific models of the depicted world. Scenic situations are created or the protagonist is con-structed as lonely, unhappy, and looking for love and a purpose in life. The anxieties of the characters are revealed through typical techniques: the frightening closed room (Dziennik szału i chciwości), the characters’ confinement in some space (Uwolnienie), their escape from the world and people (Dziennik szału i chciwości), the experi-ence of emptiness (Uwolnienie), the search for a purpose in life and the desire to define oneself (Rozmowy mijane). The way the characters are shown and constructed, as well as the world depicted, encourage us to ask questions about the condition of modernity, and, furthermore, in juxtaposition with Romanticism.

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