Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword by Kathleen Cioffi
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction
- Part I Our Auschwitz: Grotowski's Akropolis
- Part II Our Memory: Kantor's Dead Class
- Chapter 22 Tadeusz Kantor: A Very Short Introduction
- Chapter 23 Dead Class: The Making of the Legend
- Chapter 24 Dead Class in Poland
- Chapter 25 The Polish History Lesson
- Chapter 26 Dead Class Abroad
- Chapter 27 On Not Knowing Polish, Again
- Chapter 28 The Visual and the Puerile
- Chapter 29 The National and the Transnational
- Chapter 30 Witkiewicz's Tumor
- Chapter 31 An Age of Genius: Bruno Schulz and the Return to Childhood
- Chapter 32 Conversing with Gombrowicz: The Dead, the Funny, the Sacred and the Profane
- Chapter 33 Panirony: “A pain with a smile and a shrug”
- Chapter 34 Raising the Dead
- Chapter 35 Dead Class as Kaddish…
- Chapter 36 Dead Class as Dybbuk, or the Absence
- Chapter 37 The Dead and the Marionettes
- Chapter 38 Men and Objects
- Chapter 39 Dead Class as Forefathers' Eve
- Chapter 40 Dead Class: The Afterlife
- Postscript
- Appendix
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 24 - Dead Class in Poland
from Part II - Our Memory: Kantor's Dead Class
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword by Kathleen Cioffi
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction
- Part I Our Auschwitz: Grotowski's Akropolis
- Part II Our Memory: Kantor's Dead Class
- Chapter 22 Tadeusz Kantor: A Very Short Introduction
- Chapter 23 Dead Class: The Making of the Legend
- Chapter 24 Dead Class in Poland
- Chapter 25 The Polish History Lesson
- Chapter 26 Dead Class Abroad
- Chapter 27 On Not Knowing Polish, Again
- Chapter 28 The Visual and the Puerile
- Chapter 29 The National and the Transnational
- Chapter 30 Witkiewicz's Tumor
- Chapter 31 An Age of Genius: Bruno Schulz and the Return to Childhood
- Chapter 32 Conversing with Gombrowicz: The Dead, the Funny, the Sacred and the Profane
- Chapter 33 Panirony: “A pain with a smile and a shrug”
- Chapter 34 Raising the Dead
- Chapter 35 Dead Class as Kaddish…
- Chapter 36 Dead Class as Dybbuk, or the Absence
- Chapter 37 The Dead and the Marionettes
- Chapter 38 Men and Objects
- Chapter 39 Dead Class as Forefathers' Eve
- Chapter 40 Dead Class: The Afterlife
- Postscript
- Appendix
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Dead Class was received in Poland as a symbolic closing of contemporary art's neoavant-garde era. Many critics wondered at its subtle density of meanings, pointing out the self-contained nature of Kantor's work. Roman Szydłowski wrote: “There [was] not one empty space in this spectacle.” In a similar tone, in his essay “Signs and Significations in the Theatre of Tadeusz Kantor,” Olgierd Jędrzejczyk argued that every visual and aural element of Kantor's spectacle was embedded with a multiplicity of signs, each one as important as all the others:
Even the most vulgar gestures seem like an innocent child's play, in this pageant of our fears about our future, about passing the exam of life. In Kantor's theatre, every sign signifies, every gesture has meaning, every flicker of light is important. If you were to take away even one idea, there would be nothing left: everything is perfectly integrated. That is why Kantor and his troupe pay special attention to every, even the most minuscule, detail, even in the midst of what appears to be chaos. That's how they created a show that's like a poem in which great passions compete with lugubrious observations about the world.
Many critics noted that assigning all of the spectacle's elements – actors, props, music, set, text – equal footing creates a natural tension between them, with each element struggling to assert its dominance, or at least to reclaim a traditional sequence of meaning.
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- The Post-traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and KantorHistory and Holocaust in 'Akropolis' and 'Dead Class', pp. 196 - 198Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2012