Allen Kuharski
Swarthmore College, Theater, Faculty Member
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Nineteenth Century Studies, Theatre History, Theater, and 11 morePolish Theater, Witold Gombrowicz, Michał Zadara, Luca Ronconi, Ariane Mnouchkine, Jan Kott, Sam Shepard, Open Theater, Translation Studies, Devised and Physical Theatre, and Polish Danceedit
... Krzysztof Warlikowski's adaptation of Attorney Krajkowski's Dancer, first performed at the Third International Gombrowicz Festival in 1997. ... Jaroslaw Tomica, Witold Mazurkiewicz, Michal Zgiet, and Jacek Brzezinski in... more
... Krzysztof Warlikowski's adaptation of Attorney Krajkowski's Dancer, first performed at the Third International Gombrowicz Festival in 1997. ... Jaroslaw Tomica, Witold Mazurkiewicz, Michal Zgiet, and Jacek Brzezinski in Teatr Provisorium and Kompania Teatr of Lublin's 1998 stage ...
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As a Pole living in exile, Gombrowicz’s works were suspected by the communist government although his works were published and performed during periods of liberalization such as the Polish October era. In his article, Allen J. Kuharski’s... more
As a Pole living in exile, Gombrowicz’s works were suspected by the communist government although his works were published and performed during periods of liberalization such as the Polish October era. In his article, Allen J. Kuharski’s interest is in how various cliques or factions within Polish theatrical and cultural life before 1989 sought to claim legitimacy through identification with the performance of his works. Extending to Polish theater artists producing Gombrowicz abroad (expatriots/dissidents), this essay includes early examples of international touring of Polish productions of Gombrowicz in the 1970s, and the complications around the ongoing performance of his works within Poland in the 1980s
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... Joe selected those themes. They had to barry 104 Chaikin and Judith Malina in Man is Man, The Living Theatre, 1962. ... Page 16. Monica mall. Struck Dumb is about a fictional aphasic character, Adnan, living in Venice, California, who... more
... Joe selected those themes. They had to barry 104 Chaikin and Judith Malina in Man is Man, The Living Theatre, 1962. ... Page 16. Monica mall. Struck Dumb is about a fictional aphasic character, Adnan, living in Venice, California, who is afraid of earthquakes. ...
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In this essay, Allen Kuharski discusses Jan Kott as an exiled Polish writer best known for his essays on Shakespeare’s plays, and compares and contrasts his writings to a variety of other Polish émigré writers, notably Witold Gombrowicz.... more
In this essay, Allen Kuharski discusses Jan Kott as an exiled Polish writer best known for his essays on Shakespeare’s plays, and compares and contrasts his writings to a variety of other Polish émigré writers, notably Witold Gombrowicz. He argues that Kott’s most important contribution was ultimately as a performance theorist, in the traditions of Wyspiański and Brecht, rather than as a traditional critic or scholar, and as a result he reached a larger readership in English and other languages than any other Polish writer. His choice of Shakespeare as a subject belied the full depth and complexity of the Polish sources (often experiential) for his readings of the plays – sources not always acknowledged in his work. Kuharski uses Kott’s own syncretic, archetypal methods to interpret his life and work, explaining his position as an exiled writer via Shakespearean characters such as Duke Senior in As You Like It and Prospero in The Tempest – and, closest to the experience of the émigré, the cross-dressing Rosalind, compelled to belie herself in order to express herself. Tracing the evolution of Kott’s complex existential self-definition in various phases of his life and writing, Kuharski concludes that the key to Kott’s various authorial personae is the influence of the inter-war Polish writer and critic Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński.
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Features the Third International Gombrowicz Festival (1997) in Radom, Poland. Mentions that the festival is an effort to honor and present the plays of Polish playwright Witold Gombrowicz, whose many plays had been censored for years in... more
Features the Third International Gombrowicz Festival (1997) in Radom, Poland. Mentions that the festival is an effort to honor and present the plays of Polish playwright Witold Gombrowicz, whose many plays had been censored for years in communist Eastern Europe. Reviews and describes several plays presented at the festival, all written by Gombrowicz, including two productions of Ivona, Princess of Burgundia, one directed by Karin Beier, and the other by Anna Augustynowicz; two productions of Operetta, one directed by Gábor Tompa, and the other, retitled As If \u27Operetta\u27, directed by Jurek Sawka; and the stage adaptation of the playwright\u27s novel A Feast at Countess Kotlubay\u27s, directed by Michael Hackett, among a few others
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Witold Gombrowicz’s first novel Ferdydurke, originally published in Warsaw in 1937, remains one of his most effective acts of literary provocation, in a career devoted to calculated impetuousness and profound insouciance. That the mind of... more
Witold Gombrowicz’s first novel Ferdydurke, originally published in Warsaw in 1937, remains one of his most effective acts of literary provocation, in a career devoted to calculated impetuousness and profound insouciance. That the mind of a playwright was also at work in the novel is clear in its first passages, which freely jump between narrative prose and the dialogue of a play script. But Gombrowicz’s histrionic and dramatic sensibility permeates Ferdydurke in more profound ways, as well. The motif that provides the inner logic to the novel’s fragmented and collage-like structure is that of the duel. Just as the characters challenge and provoke each other in ways both startling and revealing, the novel itself is designed to have the same effect on the reader. Like an impudent suitor, Gombrowicz demands attention, at times out of ardor and others out of mockery. To keep things interesting, he does not make it easy to judge his motives on this score.
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Directed by Janusz Oprynski & Witold Mazurkiewicz; scenography by Jerzy Rudzki; music composed by Borys Somerschaf; light and sound design by Janusz Oprynski and Jan Szamryk. Ac- tors: Jacek Brzezinski (Prof. Pimko; the faculty of Mr.... more
Directed by Janusz Oprynski & Witold Mazurkiewicz; scenography by Jerzy Rudzki; music composed by Borys Somerschaf; light and sound design by Janusz Oprynski and Jan Szamryk. Ac- tors: Jacek Brzezinski (Prof. Pimko; the faculty of Mr. Piorkowski's school; Mrs. Young; ...
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The February 9, 2009, Opéra National de Paris performance of Yvonne Princesse de Bourgogne ( Ivona, Princess of Burgundia ), directed Luc Bondy, based on the play by Witold Gombrowicz and performed at Palais Garnier in Paris, is reviewed
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Werkstattaspekte in dem Nachwort nahezu völlig ausgespart, sieht man von einigen spärlichen Anmerkungen zur Unübersetzbarkeit von Wortspielen als Trägern einer „kunstvollen Verschleierung und Zweideutigkeit" (326) einmal ab. Im... more
Werkstattaspekte in dem Nachwort nahezu völlig ausgespart, sieht man von einigen spärlichen Anmerkungen zur Unübersetzbarkeit von Wortspielen als Trägern einer „kunstvollen Verschleierung und Zweideutigkeit" (326) einmal ab. Im Hinblick auf das oben skizzierte Übersetzungsverständnis käme der Textgeschichte einer Übersetzung vielleicht aber ebenso große (nicht nur literaturdidaktische) Bedeutung zu als dem letztlich vorgelegten Endprodukt. Es bleibt zu hoffen, daß Helbling die Genesis seiner Texte an anderer Stelle möglichst ausführlich darlegen wird. Schade auch, daß der Übersetzer sein translatorisches Konzept nicht erläutert, daß es erst im oft beträchtlichen, aber hier nicht beklagten, da produktiven Abstand zum elisabethanischen Text erfahrbar wird. Überdies vermißt man Anmerkungen, die dem heutigen Leser das Verständnis dieser im Laufe der Zeit doch recht hermetisch gewordenen Verse erleichtern könnten (Beispiele: die Motive des Phoenix, 19, und der Ringelblume, 25). Ein Fazit seiner Arbeit zieht Helbling selbst, wenn er der Hoffnung Ausdruck verleiht, daß er „einen neuen Impuls, oder auch einfach wieder einen Impuls gibt zur Aufnahme, zur Verbreitung eines merkwürdigen und bedeutenden Buches im deutschen Sprachraum" (327 f.). Nach all der unsäglichen Sisyphosarbeit vielleicht ein schmerzlich bescheidener Anspruch, aber auch so berühmte Übersetzer der Sonette wie Stefan George und Paul Celan haben letztlich nicht mehr bewirken können. Ein weiteres Fazit ist denkbar: Helblings Übertragung der Sonnets als willkommener leiser Kontrapunkt zu so mancher schrillen deutschsprachigen Shakespeare-Aufführung der letzten Jahre, die sich nur allzu bereitwillig den Materialschlachten und Montagetechniken, der Endspielphilosophie und politischen Didaxis, dem ,Theater der Grausamkeit' und multimedialen Spektakel hingegeben hat.
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... His mad efforts to bare himself are only superficial even as he literally parades naked on the stage. ... of Gombrowicz's last play Operetta from Replika of Stockholm, re titled As if "Operetta" (Som om em... more
... His mad efforts to bare himself are only superficial even as he literally parades naked on the stage. ... of Gombrowicz's last play Operetta from Replika of Stockholm, re titled As if "Operetta" (Som om em "Operett"), di rected and adapted by the company's founder, Jurek Sawka. ...