Petersburg introduced to Polish dramaturgy

The Media Center of the New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater presented the third volume of the Anthology of Contemporary Polish Drama. According to a Rosbalt correspondent, the presentation of the anthology took place in the form of a discussion between Russian and Polish playwrights, theater critics, and translators about the problems of modern Polish drama.

“Each text of the collection will find in Russia both its director and its audience when it is staged,” said Polish playwright and theater producer Elena Tvorkovska.

It was Tvorkovska who translated into Russian one of the plays included in the collection – “Reykjavik ’74” by Marta Sokolovskaya, this is a drama about a wrongful trial based on real facts.

All 13 works presented in the collection, be it “Miss HIV” by Maciej Kovalevsky, “Nuremberg” by Wojciech Tomczyk, “Our Daily Soup” by Amanita Muscaria, “History of Jacob. Tragedy in XXX Episodes” by Tadeusz Slobodzianik and other dramatic texts are about the acute problems not only of modern Poland, but of the whole of Eastern Europe, including Russia. They are about the work of memory, repentance, as well as the unwillingness to remember and repent, about conformity and fatigue.

The St. Petersburg translator, theater critic, author of the translation of the play “Dark Forest” by Andrzej Stasiuk, Yuri Lottin, also spoke about the relevance of the problems of texts. In his opinion, the playwright cannot live in the “upper world”, soar above reality, not taking into account what is happening around him. Andrzej Stasiuk in his play relies on one of the theories of the development of civilization, according to which people in the course of evolution are divided into two parts – rich owners and cheap labor.

“All these stories, being extremely Polish, resonate unusually with Russian reality. And yet we have a completely different way to see, hear and write about the world,” theater critic Alyona Karas reflects in the preface to the book. “Fearless, more edgy and varied in experimenting with language.”

The anthology, presented on the New Stage of the Alexandrinka, was published with the support of the Polish Cultural Center in Moscow and the Polish Institute in St. Petersburg, the previous volumes were published in 2010 and 2015.