Papers by Dorota Sosnowska
Performance Research, 2024
This article discusses the role of repertoire in Polish theatre during the 1990s, particularly fo... more This article discusses the role of repertoire in Polish theatre during the 1990s, particularly focusing on the influence of British ‘in-yer-face’ drama. It draws on theatrical and cultural definitions of the repertoire as in Patrice Pavis’ dictionary or Erving Goffman and Diana Taylor’s writings, which refer to cultural practices and performances that embody and transmit knowledge across time. Repertoire, according to Taylor, is crucial for cultural continuity and can either uphold or challenge societal norms. The articel aligns this with Raymond Williams’ idea of a ‘structures of feeling’, which represents the social and material feelings and thoughts emerging before they become fully articulated.
The author suggests that repertoire is not just about the performances themselves but also their reception, forming a dynamic field between action and reaction. She explores how the ‘in-yer-face’ drama, characterized by its violent and brutal themes, was integrated into Polish theater following the fall of communism. This genre, exemplified by the works of Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill, introduced a new structure of feeling in post-communist Poland. It resonated with the societal changes and the trauma of transition, being perceived as ‘new’, ‘modern’ and ‘authentic’, even though it was also seen as ‘disgusting’ and ‘horrible’.
By adopting this style, Polish theatre engaged in a broader global discourse and confronted its own local traumas. The reception and incorporation of this drama into the Polish repertoire highlight how it became more than just isolated performances; it reflected and shaped the experience of political and cultural transition in Poland. Ultimately, Sosnowska argues that ‘in-yer-face’ drama, functioning as a repertoire in Poland, offers a unique lens through which to understand the social changes of the 1990s, serving as an archive of emerging, yet-to-be-fully-known knowledge.
Didaskalia, 2024
The mystery is watching. Alicja Żebrowska’s Art and the Political Transition
The text was writte... more The mystery is watching. Alicja Żebrowska’s Art and the Political Transition
The text was written in response to Alicja Żebrowska’s exhibition The Mystery is Watching. Works from the Times of Transition (Tajemnica patrzy. Prace z czasu transformacji) curated by Jakub Banasiak at the Gdansk City Gallery in 2024. The artist’s early works were presented as ‘the art of the new spirituality’. Her classic works belonging to the canon of feminist and critical art have been almost completely omitted. Thus, the experience of systemic transformation recorded in Żebrowska’s art was presented as a mystical mystery. By recalling interpretations of the artist’s works from the 1990s and 2000s, tracing how the feminist discourse was constituted in Polish art after 1989, as well as the changing views of the artist herself, the author tries to see what the mystery understood in this way actually hides. With the help of the non-representational theory, she proposes a reading of Żebrowska’s art that opens up the possibility of grasping transformation as an experience, and not only as images and meanings superimposed on it one by one.
Crisis and Communitas Performative Concepts of Commonality in Arts and Politics, 2023
Radziszewski is one of the most renowned queer Polish artists. He is also a founder of the para-i... more Radziszewski is one of the most renowned queer Polish artists. He is also a founder of the para-institution called Queer Archives Institute, which gathers documents on the lives of excluded or living-in-secret communities, mostly from Eastern European countries. At the heart of this collection are the Ryszard Kisiel’s archives. The Donald Duck stickers also connote Western imagery, framing the understanding of AIDS in Poland as well as the desires and imageries of transition. Intentionally planned to fall one day after The Power of Secrets’ opening, visitors to Ujazdowski Castle could also attend a performance by Polish theatre director Michal Borczuch. After June 4, 1989, when the first semi-free elections were held in Poland, Dionizjusz Czubala—a Polish folklorist working in the region of Silesia—noted that people started to tell themselves frightening stories about the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In 1992, the Warsaw gallery Appendix, located in the same building as the Academy of Fine Arts, presented Antoni Grabowski’s work entitled 5000 Elements.
European Journal of Theater and Performance, 2022
The article explores the ties between the actor Marcello Moretti playing Arelcchino in Giorgio St... more The article explores the ties between the actor Marcello Moretti playing Arelcchino in Giorgio Strehler Arino, The Servant of Two Masters and the mask, which, viewed in its materiality, appears as a theatrical thing. Taking our cue from Robin Bernstein who suggested apprehending things and objects in performative categories, I take a look at the mask as a special kind of scenario, imposing itself on the actor or performer who wears it. Contrary to Bernstein, I would not recommend seeing this property of the mask through its status as a Heideggerian Thing; I prefer to view the mask as an object, taking into account its inanimate materiality and dependency on the human body. I thus put forward the category of the “performative object,” which, in my reading, is also the key to understanding the mask as part of the theatrical archive, enabling the reconstruction, embodied updating, and activization of the history of old performative forms.
Theatralia
The body-archive category in Polish Theatre and Performance Studies is articulated as an emancipa... more The body-archive category in Polish Theatre and Performance Studies is articulated as an emancipatory tool with the potential to reclaim the history of marginalised, oppressed, and silenced groups not represented in the archive, but as I claim, it still subsumes the body under the power of identity and meaning it gains through history. Looking at one of the most important 'dead bodies' in the archive of Polish contemporary theatre – Sarah Kane's body – and the way it was present and presented to the Polish viewers, I ask if the other model of the relation between body and history is possible. I find it through the notion of trauma and plasticity inscribed in Kane's text and realised on the Polish stage in the 1999 production of Blasted. Reading the remains of the performance I ask how it can be read in the context of Polish political transition and how it reflects the meaning of Kane's 'new brutalism' in Polish 1990s.
Didaskalia, 2022
Recenzja spektaklu Agnieszki Jakimiak "Miła robótka".
Didaskalia, 2022
The paper reflects on the censorship after 1989 in the context of its ability to create and parad... more The paper reflects on the censorship after 1989 in the context of its ability to create and paradoxically legitimise the otherness. As an example the author uses Polish imagery around the HIV/AIDS epidemics with special focus on two artistic exhibitions from the early 1990s with the epidemic as the subject. One of them was quite successful, but it is forgotten today; the other is remembered to this day and often mentioned in the context of 1990s art even though it was censored back then. Showing the relations between censorship and discourses of otherness the paper reflects on different political possibilities inscribed in the history of transition.
Reenactment Case Studies: Global Perspectives on Experiential History, 2022
As a Polish researcher interested in performance and reenactment, I encounter a linguistic proble... more As a Polish researcher interested in performance and reenactment, I encounter a linguistic problem: there are no good equivalents for these two terms in Polish. Although performance studies is quite well established in Polish scholarship, the term performatyka (performatics) has an odd ring to it. The word “performance” is used in its English spelling to mean a work of art, or in Polish orthography (performans) to mean cultural performance (Kosiński, 2018). Taking up Diana Taylor's thought, one could state that the word “performance” becomes a foreign, multivocal, transcultural term, constantly reminding us about “the problem of untranslatability”; as such, it “is actually a positive one, a necessary stumbling block that reminds us that ‘we’—whether in our various disciplines, or languages, or geographic locations […]—do not simply or unproblematically understand each other”(Taylor, 2003, p. 15).
Pamiętnik Teatralny, 2022
Tekst jest omówieniem książki A History of Polish Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 2022) – to... more Tekst jest omówieniem książki A History of Polish Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 2022) – tomu pod redakcją Katarzyny Fazan, Michala Kobialki i Bryce’a Lease’a, który obejmuje historię polskiego teatru od epoki staropolskiej do współczesności. Na marginesie lektury autorka proponuje refleksję o konstruowanych w książce kategoriach peryferyjności i polskości, zauważając ich powiązanie z historycznym doświadczeniem transformacji ustrojowej i wyłaniającą się w jego ramach binarną opozycją Wschód–Zachód. Wydobywa także zarysowane w niektórych tekstach możliwości innego namysłu nad polskością, które warto rozwinąć i wykorzystać w dalszych badaniach nad polskim teatrem.
The book present the figure of the worker and its performances of memory from the point of view o... more The book present the figure of the worker and its performances of memory from the point of view of cultural studies, philosophy, art history, theatre studies and musicology. It begins with the original scene of the accident in the factory, and then it reviews the Warsaw cabaret scene of the early twentieth century, the theatrical and artistic avant-garde circle, the socialist realist cultural projects, modernist kitchen designs, workers’ sport and proletarian art, to end with a reflection on gestures in films. In this way, the editors wish to propose a multifaceted, and at the same time fragmentary and distracted perspective, which would make it possible to extract from the documents, narrations and visual presentations, the still problematic and poorly recognised figure of the worker in Polish culture. These texts not only fit into the methodological postulates formulated as a performative writing of history, but they themselves become the performances of memory, in which the autho...
The book present the figure of the worker and its performances of memory from the point of view o... more The book present the figure of the worker and its performances of memory from the point of view of cultural studies, philosophy, art history, theatre studies and musicology. It begins with the original scene of the accident in the factory, and then it reviews the Warsaw cabaret scene of the early twentieth century, the theatrical and artistic avant-garde circle, the socialist realist cultural projects, modernist kitchen designs, workers’ sport and proletarian art, to end with a reflection on gestures in films. In this way, the editors wish to propose a multifaceted, and at the same time fragmentary and distracted perspective, which would make it possible to extract from the documents, narrations and visual presentations, the still problematic and poorly recognised figure of the worker in Polish culture. These texts not only fit into the methodological postulates formulated as a performative writing of history, but they themselves become the performances of memory, in which the autho...
Performance Research, 2017
Theatralia, 2019
Andrzej Leder, Polish psychoanalyst and philosopher, states that between 1939 and 1956, a revolut... more Andrzej Leder, Polish psychoanalyst and philosopher, states that between 1939 and 1956, a revolution took place in Poland. A revolution he calls an 'overslept revolution' (LEDER 2014). To him, it is the time when Polish society entered modernity and changed its model from a feudal to a bourgeois society. He utilizes Jacques Lacan's term trans-passive to underscore the character of Polish revolution: it is perceived as someone else's act, as a nightmare and a sweet phantasy at the same time. This article explores the consequences the workers' protests in Poland between 1945 and 1948, and their performative, or theatrical character. I question how this influences our understanding of common memory and history. Another important philosophical context is Hannah Arendt's On Revolution (1963), and her statement that in any revolutionary act there is a deep division between the mass population and how their goals are formulated. Performative perspective is a way to overcome this division-at least in historical thinking.
Theatralia, 2016
Peggy Phelan, in her famous text, 'Ontology of Performance', states: 'Performance cannot be saved... more Peggy Phelan, in her famous text, 'Ontology of Performance', states: 'Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented, or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representations: once it does so it becomes something other than performance. […] Performance […] becomes itself through disappearance.' (PHELAN 1993: 146) At the same time she says that body itself cannot be saved, recorded or documented and that it becomes itself only through unmediated presence that can be experienced by other bodies. The performing body is singular and ephemeral-present and real. She explains: 'In performance, the body is metonymic of self, of character, of voice, of "presence". But in the plenitude of their apparent visibility and availability, the performer actually disappears and represents something else-dance, movement, sound, character, "art".' (PHELAN 1993: 150) How should this be understood? What is the body on stage if it is not the 'body per se'? The answer given by Phelan is not very satisfying. Performance becomes a metaphysical category with its ephemerality that transcends the mortal body. Becoming itself through disappearance, performance is pure experience, not anchored in any kind of materiality. But looking closer at her text one can see that all the examples she analyses are not classical performances. She chooses artworks that are literally based on the use of different media and different technologies. In the very centre of every work cited by Phelan there is a problem of presence, which becomes questionable and unsure. Cindy Sherman (Film-stills) dresses in various costumes to become an image of the body photographed and hung on the wall. She is herself and not-herself at the same time, touching the classical problem of impossible dualism between the actor and the personage she embodies. Angelika Festa, in the work Untitled Dance (with fish and others)-a key example for Phelan-changes her body to a static figure, while the 'performance' is taking place on screen, where different projections enter into a complicated game with the body and its ability to endure. One screen presents the image, which is delayed in relation to the 'real time' presence of the body. Time is questioned here, so is the presence itself. But it is possible to see, through of the use of technology which becomes a tool of mediation. Unwittingly,
Pamiętnik Teatralny, 2021
This text is an analysis of Krzysztof Warlikowski’s 2011 production, African Tales by Shakespeare... more This text is an analysis of Krzysztof Warlikowski’s 2011 production, African Tales by Shakespeare, tracing the project of community taken up in the performance. The central thesis takes this to be neither a national community nor a dispersed, intersectional coalition, as Bryce Lease has formulated the difference between Polish political and traditional theater, but rather a transitional community—unstable, unsuccessful, and rooted in the experience of political transition. The author, by invoking references to the visual arts present in the performance, points to other community projects emerging from the experience of transition while showing how, when appropriated for the purposes of performance, their meanings change radically. In the masculine, phallic, and violent world of African Tales, art and philosophy born of the experience of femininity are lost, twisted, and forgotten. Among the most important threads of analysis, however, is the way racialization and racism function in ...
Pamiętnik Teatralny, 2021
This text is an analysis of Krzysztof Warlikowski’s 2011 production, African Tales by Shakespeare... more This text is an analysis of Krzysztof Warlikowski’s 2011 production, African Tales by Shakespeare, tracing the project of community taken up in the performance. The central thesis takes this to be neither a national community nor a dispersed, intersectional coalition, as Bryce Lease has formulated the difference between Polish political and traditional theater, but rather a transitional community—unstable, unsuccessful, and rooted in the experience of political transition. The author, by invoking references to the visual arts present in the performance, points to other community projects emerging from the experience of transition while showing how, when appropriated for the purposes of performance, their meanings change radically. In the masculine, phallic, and violent world of African Tales, art and philosophy born of the experience of femininity are lost, twisted, and forgotten. Among the most important threads of analysis, however, is the way racialization and racism function in the play. From this perspective, the problematic status of the community the play establishes is most clearly seen: as a community of phantasmic, aspirational, transitional whiteness
Ogród sztuk. Maska, 2017
Maska teatralna i rytualna w świetle humanistycznego zwrotu ku rzeczom.
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Papers by Dorota Sosnowska
The author suggests that repertoire is not just about the performances themselves but also their reception, forming a dynamic field between action and reaction. She explores how the ‘in-yer-face’ drama, characterized by its violent and brutal themes, was integrated into Polish theater following the fall of communism. This genre, exemplified by the works of Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill, introduced a new structure of feeling in post-communist Poland. It resonated with the societal changes and the trauma of transition, being perceived as ‘new’, ‘modern’ and ‘authentic’, even though it was also seen as ‘disgusting’ and ‘horrible’.
By adopting this style, Polish theatre engaged in a broader global discourse and confronted its own local traumas. The reception and incorporation of this drama into the Polish repertoire highlight how it became more than just isolated performances; it reflected and shaped the experience of political and cultural transition in Poland. Ultimately, Sosnowska argues that ‘in-yer-face’ drama, functioning as a repertoire in Poland, offers a unique lens through which to understand the social changes of the 1990s, serving as an archive of emerging, yet-to-be-fully-known knowledge.
The text was written in response to Alicja Żebrowska’s exhibition The Mystery is Watching. Works from the Times of Transition (Tajemnica patrzy. Prace z czasu transformacji) curated by Jakub Banasiak at the Gdansk City Gallery in 2024. The artist’s early works were presented as ‘the art of the new spirituality’. Her classic works belonging to the canon of feminist and critical art have been almost completely omitted. Thus, the experience of systemic transformation recorded in Żebrowska’s art was presented as a mystical mystery. By recalling interpretations of the artist’s works from the 1990s and 2000s, tracing how the feminist discourse was constituted in Polish art after 1989, as well as the changing views of the artist herself, the author tries to see what the mystery understood in this way actually hides. With the help of the non-representational theory, she proposes a reading of Żebrowska’s art that opens up the possibility of grasping transformation as an experience, and not only as images and meanings superimposed on it one by one.
https://www.dialog-pismo.pl/w-numerach/brzydkie-uczucia-o-nudzie-w-sztuce-i-teatrze-lat-dziewiecdziesiatych
The author suggests that repertoire is not just about the performances themselves but also their reception, forming a dynamic field between action and reaction. She explores how the ‘in-yer-face’ drama, characterized by its violent and brutal themes, was integrated into Polish theater following the fall of communism. This genre, exemplified by the works of Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill, introduced a new structure of feeling in post-communist Poland. It resonated with the societal changes and the trauma of transition, being perceived as ‘new’, ‘modern’ and ‘authentic’, even though it was also seen as ‘disgusting’ and ‘horrible’.
By adopting this style, Polish theatre engaged in a broader global discourse and confronted its own local traumas. The reception and incorporation of this drama into the Polish repertoire highlight how it became more than just isolated performances; it reflected and shaped the experience of political and cultural transition in Poland. Ultimately, Sosnowska argues that ‘in-yer-face’ drama, functioning as a repertoire in Poland, offers a unique lens through which to understand the social changes of the 1990s, serving as an archive of emerging, yet-to-be-fully-known knowledge.
The text was written in response to Alicja Żebrowska’s exhibition The Mystery is Watching. Works from the Times of Transition (Tajemnica patrzy. Prace z czasu transformacji) curated by Jakub Banasiak at the Gdansk City Gallery in 2024. The artist’s early works were presented as ‘the art of the new spirituality’. Her classic works belonging to the canon of feminist and critical art have been almost completely omitted. Thus, the experience of systemic transformation recorded in Żebrowska’s art was presented as a mystical mystery. By recalling interpretations of the artist’s works from the 1990s and 2000s, tracing how the feminist discourse was constituted in Polish art after 1989, as well as the changing views of the artist herself, the author tries to see what the mystery understood in this way actually hides. With the help of the non-representational theory, she proposes a reading of Żebrowska’s art that opens up the possibility of grasping transformation as an experience, and not only as images and meanings superimposed on it one by one.
https://www.dialog-pismo.pl/w-numerach/brzydkie-uczucia-o-nudzie-w-sztuce-i-teatrze-lat-dziewiecdziesiatych
Analyzing the project and its contexts I address the issue of the relation between performance and repetition. The whole project can be interpreted as a kind of reenactment of Polish and Haitian history. But in fact in the archive we can find another version of events. Polish Napoleonic soldiers in majority were fighting against Haitians. Few of them – and none of the officers – changed sides. I ask what is performed in Cazale? What is enacted and reenacted when Polish opera signers in Polish traditional costumes sing Polish opera in the Haitian village, for the Haitian villagers and with their small input? The theoretical background is Rebecca Schneider’s conceptions of reenactment and repetition.
At the end I address another issue: how the relation between the history, repetition and performance can be analyzed when it is seen in the colonial and post-colonial context? What is the relation between this artwork, the story held in the archives, the document it produces and the notions of blackness and whiteness it uses? How the document reenacted by the body changes itself depending on the skin color? I refer to the concepts of blackness provided by Fred Moten in his writings.
The starting point of my speech will be the column titled "Attempt to Record" in the magazine “Dialogue" initiated by Konstanty Puzyna in the 70s. Its aim was to deal with the reality of the theatre, which was no longer just the staging of the drama. The place of the text - literature - in relation to the theatre has been radically changed. What are those "Attempt to Record"? In my opinion, they are not transparent documents of the works that they try to capture, but a part of the theatre medium, revealing the tension between performance and text which is the key to the theatricality itself. So I would like to offer the intermedia perspective and read the records as a boundary species that at the same time undermines the border; as texts that violate liveness of the theatre and the performances that contradict the stability of the text. I would also like to put a question about the video recording, which was by the creators of the column in the "Dialogue" considered ideal record (text). It is also a major field of research in the context of performance studies. Using the diagnosis of Amelia Jones, Philip Auslander and Rebecca Schneider I would like to see the elusiveness in the saving of theatre performance and in the elusiveness of the theatre - archive and use this paradox to build a new definition of the relation between the theatre and the text.
W ten sposób powstaje wielostronna, a zarazem fragmentaryczna i rozproszona perspektywa, która pozwala spod dokumentów, narracji i wizualnych przedstawień wyjrzeć wciąż problematycznej i nie dość rozpoznanej w kulturze polskiej figurze robotnika. Zamieszczone w tomie teksty same stają się swoistymi performansami pamięci, w ramach których autorzy starają się odtworzyć historię, której podstawowym medium pozostają ciało i gesty – uchwycone we fragmentarycznych relacjach, migawkowych obrazach, pojedynczych scenach.
Podążając więc za myślą Tavianiego, trzeba założyć, że komedia dell'arte nie powinna być rozumiana jako ściśle określony gatunek teatru europejskiego, a przynajmniej nie tylko w ten sposób. W swym źródłowym kulturowym kontekście komedia jest po prostu synonimem teatru, a arte oznacza kunszt w najrozmaitszych dziedzinach publicznej ekspresji, poczynając od poezji, przez muzykę, taniec, aż do popisów akrobatycznych, które ją powołały do życia, zapowiada heterogeniczność form teatru europejskiego.
Siro Ferrone, przyglądając się metodom kompozycyjnym w teatrze dell'arte, także wskazuje na heterogeniczny i złożony charakter zjawiska, postulując w związku z tym nowe podejście metodologiczne.
Robert Henke widzi w teatrze dell'arte historyczne napięcie między oralnością a piśmiennością, które odciska piętno nie tylko na samym spektaklu ale także na formalnym kontekście jego funkcjonowania w społeczeństwie.
Anne MacNeil, śledząc muzyczne aspekty przedstawień dell'arte, ukazuje ścisły związek zachodzący między sztuką śpiewających i komponujących aktorek a narodzinami opery.
Enrico Fulchignoni zaś, przyglądając się raz jeszcze historycznym źródłom komedii dell'arte, każe zakwestionować jej mityczne włoskie korzenie. Teatr dell'arte rodzi się nie tylko na przecięciu oralności i piśmienności, muzyki i teatralnej gry, rodzi się także w przecięciu kultur, wzajemnym przenikaniu wschodu i zachodu, w miejscu, gdzie różnorodność, dialog i wymiana stają się źródłem nowych form kulturowych.
When in postwar Poland a new political reality developed gradually squeezing the loop of totalitarianism, and the culture began to apply the doctrine of socialist realism, the figure of the queen - the incarnation of anomalies, loosening the limits of gender and introducing a cognitive dissonance, the image of power and a symbol of hierarchy - paradoxically, has become the dominant model of femininity in the theater. The collective of workers, "new women" who were given the right to work by the system, were not able to create an alternative model and take away the throne from Mary Stuart, Mary Tudor, Phaedra, Cleopatra, Szimena or Lilla Weneda.
At the theater Queen of Actresses, Queen of Polish Stage, Queen of Polish Hearts still prevailed. The three actresses: Irena Eichlerowna, Nina Andrycz and Elżbieta Barszczewska were not only great at playing the royal roles, but they also embodied the royal acting. As queens they prevailed on the theatrical stages till late sixties, than they were still present although not so popular. In the communist times the queen shimmered with different meanings and constituted an alibi for the content, which could not exist outside the theater - here in historical costume and corset of convention images of femininity full of sensuality, sexuality, power, nobility, madness and freedom could be implemented.
In this work, using the methodology of the new historicism, the author examines selected roles of those three great actresses painting a broad background of social, political and cultural life. Each role is put in the right context: of art, historical events and social change. Main source were reviews that are used not only to reconstruct historical spectacles and roles but also to analyze the language with which the women actresses are described. The interest is in metaphors, images, contexts that the reviewers use to describe royal femininity of those three artists.