A Laboratory of Impure Forms The Plays of Tadeusz Rózewicz

Subjects:

• Literature » Drama
• Literature » World Literature

Reviews:

• Filipowicz traces the devolution of structure in Rozewicz's plays over chronologically arranged groups of recurrent themes. Three plays--Dead and Buried, The Card Index, and Spaghetti and the Sword--are united in their presentation of the dashed dreams of people who have lost the war and have been seized by the terrorizing grip of communism. Filipowicz credits The Witnesses with extraordinary balance of speech and action, silence and stasis here used to criticize Polish complacency and social compliance under totalitarian rule to secure their "little stabilization." She points out that Rozewicz's is a poet's theater, created "out of the materiality and malleability of language, out of gaps and incoherence, cacophony and babble" where dialogue is deliberately replaced with sound-objects. She finds that the ruthlessly deliberate departure from conventions, evident in the triptych The Interrupted Act, Birth Rate, and The Guards, underscores a sexual pun. Meticulously scholarly, lucidly and coherently written, Filipowicz's work is definitive, the only encompassing one on this Polish playwright in English. Valuable for academic scholars as well as for students of drama and literature, it is recommendable also to undergraduate students.
  —Choice
• This book responds to an important need. Filipowicz's book is a highly informative one. It provides a precise chronology of Rózewicz's life and works up to 1990, as well as a calendar of premieres and major performances. The core of the book is the discussion of Róewicz's plays and here one finds predominantly illuminating analyses. Provides an informative description of the plays, their settings, characters, actions, conflicts, and the problems involved.
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  Slavic Review

Table of Contents:

• Editions and Key to Abbreviations
• Chronology of Rózewicz's Life and Works
• Calendar of Premières
• Introduction
• Rózewicz's Dramaturgy: Context and Method
• Subverting a Heroic Myth
• Dismantling Domestic Drama
• A Postmodern Trilogy
• Our Little Stabilization
• Drama Born of Literature
• Conclusion
• Selected Bibliography
• Index