Czego nauczyły mnie Gardzienice
What Has ”Gardzienice” Taught Me

Summary/Abstract: This sketch compares the activities of the theatres discussed at the Cracow conference on ”Two theatres – two worlds”: the Reduta Theatre and ”Gardzienice”. The title refers to a statement made in 1925 by Stefan Jaracz, a former Reduta actor: What Has the Reduta Taught Me. The first part of the text asserts that Jaracz’s concise characteristic of the interwar Reduta can be considered as apt also in the case of ”Gardzienice”. Both companies attempted to establish a self-reliant theatre, taught how to work, created their own methods, established art laboratories, introduced musical spectacles, and featured actors who subsequently cultivated new methods of theatrical work; the two theatres also organised journeys (expeditions) to the Eastern Borderlands of the Republic. In other words, they were not merely artistic institutions but also social and educational initiatives (in addition, the Reduta had its own Institute, and ”Gardzienice” – an Academy of Theatre Practices). In a further part of the sketch the author evokes his personal experiences and contacts with ”Gardzienice” which convinced him that Włodzimierz Staniewski creates the most rapid theatre in the world (the spectacles are brief, extremely intensive and brimming with meanings difficult to decipher after seeing a single show), that work on a ”Gardzienice” spectacle never ceases (each is slightly different, thus rendering theatrological reconstruction extremely difficult), and, finally, that a theatre does not exist to be understood – it is there to offer the spectator poignant experience.

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