Powrót „Dziadów”, czyli dwa teatry

The essay of Jacek Kopciński is dedicated to new realisations of Adam Mickiewicz’s Dziady (Forefathers’ Eve) in contemporary Polish theatre. The author juxtaposes performances of two leading avant-garde directors of younger generation: Michał Zadara and Paweł Passini, and analyses the interviews of both artists. The purpose of the essay is to reconstruct their artistic consciousness. This reconstruction leads to illustrate two interpretive strategies that correspond with different directions of development of Polish contemporary theatre. Zadara stages the entire text of the drama, but distorts its meaning to build a critical distance to romantic myths. Passini, however, made an adaptation of the drama, followed its metaphysical meaning and exposed it as a rite consistent with romantic idea. The author of the article puts Zadara’s performance in the current of critical theatre, while Passini’s intepretation is treated as an alternative proposal called imagined community theatre. The context for this discussion is the jubilee of the 250 anniversary of the National Theatre and the public theatre in Poland