New Eastern Europe - November-December 2017

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with the staging of Bulat Okudzhava’s
The Extraordinary Adventures of Secret
Agent Shipov. The play staged with 19th
century costumes showed a police state
where independently thinking people
are constantly followed and evidence
is forged against them. It allowed for a
hilarious and grotesque, yet at the same
time horrendous, analysis of a system

that is based on reporting and corrup-

tion though here – as is often the case

in the plays staged in Legnica – the fo-

cus is on the fate of the average person,

an informer who spies on people not

because he believes in it but in order to

survive. This extraordinary performance

was staged in three cities: in Legnica,

Warsaw and Moscow.

Twenty Years After

The 2009 staging of Krzysztof Kop-
ka’s drama titled Siberian Drama, also
directed by Jacek Głomb, was much
different, yet also of great brilliance.
This anti-martyrdom comedy depicts a
little known story of a failed 19th cen-
tury uprising of Polish Siberian exiles
and confronts the audience with a more
contemporary motif which is the search
for truth when reconstructing the past.
The play attempted to de-mask some
stereotypes about the Polish-Russian
relationship and which are reinforced
by some historically-inflicted wounds,
distrust and even hostility. By showing
different models of historical policy,
Głomb presented the problem of find-
ing the truth. The play was staged also
outside Poland. It was performed across
Russia: in Tyumen, Tobolsk, Shadrinsk,
Irbit, Ishim, Tomsk, Novosibirsk – the
places where Polish exiles were sent –
but also in Moscow and Vladimir, and
later in Arkhangelsk.
The most recent production that also
fits this category of Russian-inspired

plays is Adolf Nowaczyński’s The False

Tsar or the Polish Festivities in Moscow,

which was adopted by Robert Urbański

and directed by Jacek Głomb in 2015.

This is a story of the first Dimitriad (the

name used for the 1605 – 1618 Polish–

Muscovite War), when Polish magnates

took advantage of Russia’s internal cha-

os and weakness to militarily intervene,

removing Boris Godunov as tsar and

replacing him with a young man raised

in the Polish court who claimed to be

the son of Ivan the Terrible. This sto-

ry was also staged without historical

dress. The artists from Legnica want-

ed to show that politics can be ruthless,

where everything is allowed. One move

can bring a terrible result and wounds

can take centuries to heal. In this the-

atrical play everyone receives the same

harsh punishment – both the Polish oc-

cupiers of the Kremlin, who are driven

by their greed for the spoils of war and

who, with their superiority complex,

show contempt towards the hosts, as

well as the Russian magnates, who re-

Legnica with a view to Russia, Grzegorz Żurawiński Eastern Café