Brytyjczycy i Amerykanie o teatrze polskim lat zaborów
The British and Americans on the Polish Theatre of the Post-Partitioning Years

Summary/Abstract: The publication consists of fragments of 43 English-language texts of varied character, including classic travel accounts, autobiographies, reportages, reminiscences, as well as analytical or problem-focused studies. What they have in common is that their authors share their observations and experiences relating to the theatres and theatre life in the territory of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the post-partitioning period of 1795–1918. The set is organized chronologically, opening with an account from 1804 and concluding with a report from 1915, so all the documents come from a time after the Third Partition, and several of the latest date from the First World War. They talk about the National Theatre headed by Wojciech Bogusławski, about Franciszek Bohomolec, and Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski, about the legendary 1899 production of Kordian in Cracow, and about the first tango in the Warsaw Nowości Theatre in 1915. They include information about theatre buildings and halls, actors, and repertories, about the way partition authorities related to the Polish theatre, about the audiences and the way they responded in Warsaw, Vilnius, Zamość, Cracow, Lvov, Gdańsk, Poznań, and Kalisz, about the curtain by Henryk Siemiradzki, and about the world-famous Polish actress, Helena Modrzejewska. The period in which the texts were written spans over a hundred years, meaning that the political and social conditions during that time were evolving, which, along with the political views of the authors, influenced the writing perspectives. Thus, the pieces that have been collected here do not form a consistent thematic whole, as they refer to different contexts; nevertheless, they do provide a lot of precious pieces of information and observations that are all the more interesting for having been made by foreigners: people from the outside. The edition is supplied with footnotes with biographical information about the authors of respective accounts.

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