RHAPSODIC THEATRE:
[Quotations from The
Collected Plays and Writings on Theater by Karol Wojtyla]
The Rhapsodic
Theatre began its activities in Poland in 1941. It was
suppressed by the authorities in 1953, reopened in 1956, and
eventually closed for good in 1967.
Begun as a clandestine company,
with performances taking place in private apartments, this form of theatre embraced a sparse aesthetic out of necessity, since the
use of sets and costumes were prohibited by the Nazi occupation.
More creatively, the
plays also avoid elaborate plot devices or detailed character development
and focus, instead, on the interplay of personal relationships through the
power of the human word:
... the
fundamental element of dramatic art is the living human word. It is
also the nucleus of drama, a leaven through which human deeds pass, and
from which they derive their proper dynamics.
Crystallizing the connection between thought and action, the Rhapsodic
Theater provided for a cultural catharsis that people naturally long for:
Within
this concept [of catharsis] drama fulfills its social function not so much
by demonstrating action as by demonstrating it slowed down, by
demonstrating the paths on which it matures in human thought and down
which it departs from that thought to express itself externally.
Thus, the
Rhapsodic Theatre offers a new, almost ritualized, experience of the drama
that is our human existence.
- Karol
Wojtyla / John Paul II
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Having performed in numerous productions, Karol Wojtyla (John
Paul II) also authored several theatrical works.
Describing the distinctiveness of these plays, he wrote: |
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Because the word, first and foremost, proclaims certain truths
ideas, and structures rather than accompanying the action, rhapsodic
performances have an ideological rather than a narrative character. We do not find in
them the usual dramatic plot, comic or tragic situations,
complications, solutions -- everything that combines to form the
ordinary stage narrative. In rhapsodic performances, however, we always find a problem.
That problem "acts"; it is posed directly and bluntly. ... The
impact of the performance is caused not by events, transferred in a
literary manner from life to the stage, but by the problem itself
.... The problem itself acts, rouses interest, disturbs, evokes the
audience's participation, demands understanding and a solution.
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Seeking to dramatize
abstract ideas and communicate the intellect of faith, his
unique plays speak to essential human and social ideas that at
once come to life in the “action” of one’s soul and also
affect the whole of contemporary culture.
[Click
here for a more complete "artistic" biography by David Scott.]
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