Everyday Tending: Forgetting and Remembering Women’s Work in Twentieth-Century Polish Theatre
Katarzyna Kułakowska
katarzyna.kulakowska@ispan.plInstytut Sztuki, Polska Akademia Nauk (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3673-4394
Agata Łuksza
University of Warsaw (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7459-0187
Abstract
The dominant narrative about Polish theatre privileges male playwrights and directors, confining women’s presence to the realm of acting. Throughout the twentieth century women actively participated in the theatre sector, assuming the different roles necessary for play production, and yet they remained excluded from the official narrative. In this article, we ask about the social and cultural mechanisms of the forgetting of women’s input into theatre practice in the Polish context. One such mechanism is the hierarchy of commentaries on theatre widely accepted by theatre historians who opt for manifestos, declarations, and theoretical lectures, while discarding the more ‘intimate’ forms, such as interviews, letters, and diaries, which are preferred by women artists. Hence women’s thinking on theatre remains out of scope, on the margins, and “unmarked” (Phelan 1993). We invoke Paul Connerton’s (2008) type of forgetting, especially what is called “repressive erasure,” focusing on its most encrypted forms that allow the master historical narrative to keep its privileged position without apparent violence. We are interested in how power relations replicate themselves through memory politics, dooming women’s theatre practice to sink into oblivion. We investigate this process by analising selected cases of the remembering of women’s work in the domains of directing, theory, and drama.
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Keywords:
theatre, feminine, theatre history, women, gender discrimination, powerReferences
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Authors
Katarzyna Kułakowskakatarzyna.kulakowska@ispan.pl
Instytut Sztuki, Polska Akademia Nauk Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3673-4394
KATARZYNA KUŁAKOWSKA – Cultural studies scholar and cultural anthropologist. Assistant professor at the Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences, where she works on expanding Polish theatre studies to include a feminist perspective. Principal investigator on the grant project HyPaTia: A Women’s History of Polish Theatre.
Authors
Agata ŁukszaUniversity of Warsaw Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7459-0187
AGATA ŁUKSZA – Associate professor at the Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw. Theatre and performance scholar, haunted by nineteenth-century history; a feminist inspired by women of the past; and a fangirl of fantasy and gothic narratives. Currently, she is working on unveiling Polish colonial histories, hoping to prevent further replication of racial stereotypes in contemporary Poland.
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