Dziady: Adam Mickiewicz

The Krakow Dziady was another romantic staging by Konrad Swinarski, after Krasiński’s Nie-Boska komunisty and  Słowacki’s Fantazy , and at the same time the first staging of Mickiewicz’s masterpiece after five years of his stage absence (if we do not count selected scenes at the Teatr Ziemi Mazowiecka played in one evening with  Warszawianka  in 1971), which was the result of the political removal of Kazimierz Dejmek’s Dziady from the poster.

While maintaining the traditional editorial layout of the text (Part II, abridged Part IV, fragment of Part I, Part III, the poem To My Muscovite Friends ), Swinarski adopted a different understanding of the “whole” – he did not strive for a coherent composition, but rather recreated the stages of forming Dziady : he “scattered” the staging throughout the entire building of the Old Theatre at Szczepański Square, from the cloakroom to the balcony on the first floor, rearranged the upper foyer and the theatre hall, consistently breaking up the box theatre. He restored the character of a fragmentary “work in progress” to the dramatic cycle (Mickiewicz himself spoke of a “monstrous composition”, and Swinarski added in the theatre programme that it was an open work and that “a certain process is reflected in this type of structure, not a closed and unambiguous idea” [Swinarski 1973, p. 22]).

More about this collaboration between Adam and Konrad you find at EncyklopediaTeatru.pl