To Be (or Not to Be) Like Chojka: A Reminiscence of Joanna Puzyna-Chojka (1969-2018)

Katarzyna Kręglewska

Abstract

The text is an attempt at sketching the professional career and describing other theatre-related activities of Joanna Puzyna-Chojka (1969–2018), a theatre scholar, academic teacher, and most of all, active participant of Polish theatre life. Puzyna-Chojka started working at the University of Gdańsk in 1993. In the twenty-five years of her professional career, she published several hundred articles devoted mostly to the newest dramaturgic strategies, presence of new media in the theatre, and various kinds of theatre realism. She is the author of Gra o zbawienie: o dramatach Tadeusza Słobodzianka (Playing for Salvation: On Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s Dramas, Kraków, 2008) and editor of four multi-author books. Puzyna-Chojka was a prolific theatre critic: she debuted in Dziennik Bałtycki in 1989, and in the next three decades she wrote several hundred theatre reviews and other texts of theatre criticism, publishing in virtually every notable periodical documenting the life of Polish theatre. And finally, Puzyna-Chojka was equally interested in the practical side of running a theatre. She worked as a literary director of the Muzyczny Theatre in Gdynia, the Wojciech Bogusławski Theatre in Kalisz, and the Witold Gombrowicz Municipal Theatre in Gdynia and she served as literary director and selectioner of the Kaliskie Spotkania Teatralne festival and literary and programme director of the R@port Festival of Contemporary Polish Plays in Gdynia (where she also participated in devising the Gdynia Dramaturgy Award). In the last years she served as the programme director of the Rzeszowskie Spotkania Teatralne – Festiwal Nowego Teatru in Rzeszów.