Turandot Carla Gozziego na scenie Teatru Ludowego w Nowej Hucie
Turandot by Carlo Gozzi on the Stage of the Ludowy Theatre [the Folk Theatre] in Nowa Huta

Summary/Abstract: The cultural peculiarity of Nowa Huta, a city founded after World War II, resulted from the lack of any artistic habits of the young audience. It was the Ludowy Theatre which, since 1955, had been bearing the responsibility for shaping up the expectations of the spectators in the new district of Krakow [Cracow] – dynamically developing but still devoid of any cultural foundations. The team of Skuszanka soon gained recognition among critics and elevated the newly created institu-tion to the rank of an equal partner in the nationwide cultural exchange. The image of the Ludowy Theatre as a centre of progressive and experimental art quickly became even more profound, since it looked modern compared to the rather monotonous background of Krakow’s theatres at that time. Thus, it became an institution whose opening, coinciding with the symbolic date of the Polish Oc-tober, inaugurates a new season of the theatrical research. The aim of this paper is to illustrate this phenomenon by describing and analysing the performance that many of the contemporary critics called the flagship spectacle of the Nowa Huta theatre, i.e. Princess Turandot by Carlo Gozzi, di-rected by Krystyna Skuszanka. This play, drawing on fairy-tale plots and colourful Italian folk com-edies, became not only an expression of opposition to socialist realism, but also a harbinger of the future activities of this institution, and perhaps even a reflection of the condition of the Polish the-atre at that time.

• Details
• Contents