Bohdan Korzeniewski’s Letters to Andrzej Pronaszko Cover Image

Listy Bohdana Korzeniewskiego do Andrzeja Pronaszki
Bohdan Korzeniewski’s Letters to Andrzej Pronaszko

“You Really Are a Master of Your Craft”.

Contributor(s): Monika Chudzikowska (Editor)
Subject(s): Theatre, Dance, Performing Arts
Published by: Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Keywords: theatre history;Polish theatre;theatre aesthetics;

Summary/Abstract: The letters from Bohdan Korzeniewski to Andrzej Pronaszko published herein were written in 1945–1957. Most of them concern the productions that the two collaborated on in Cracow and Warsaw. The beginnings of Korzeniewski’s collaboration with the outstanding stage designer go back to the time of Nazi occupation of Poland. As active members of the Secret Theatre Board (Tajna Rada Teatralna) they were planning to found and run together an experimental “Poetic Stage” after the war. Pronaszko, having taken the position of manager of the Stary Theatre in Cracow in July of 1945, harked back to these plans when devising the theatre’s repertory: he wanted to stage some of the productions meant earlier for the Poetic Stage, e.g. Electra by Giraudoux, which resulted in a misunderstanding with Korzeniewski. Eventually, the Poetic Stage, run by Korzeniewski and Edmund Wierciński, was established in Łódź, by the Wojska Polskiego Theatre, and it opened with the first Polish performance of Electra in February of 1946. The letters from 1948–1949 are concerned with the stage set and costumes to Amphitryon 38 by Giraudoux which Korzeniewski directed after his own translation on the Mała Stage of the Stary Theatre in Cracow (premiered on 26 Nov. 1948). He recreated this production at the Rozmaitości Theatre in Warsaw, under Dobiesław Damięcki (premiered on 16 Sept. 1949). The correspondence from the 1950s deals with problems regarding the set to a production of Lithuanian social-realist play Cocks Are Crowing by Baltušis (premiere at the Kameralny Theatre in Warsaw, 26 Jan. 1951) and an unrealised production of The Un-divine Comedy by Z. Krasiński at the Polski Theatre in Warsaw, which Korzeniewski mentions in his letter written to Pronaszko from Nice in April 1957. Most of the letters being published come from the home archive of prof. Anna Kuligowska-Korzeniewska, and they are complemented by several letters kept at the Theatre Museum in Warsaw.

  • Issue Year: 250/2014
  • Issue No: 1-2
  • Page Range: 212-230
  • Page Count: 19
  • Language: Polish