Patterns of Resentment
The experience of resentment has shaped nearly all the significant phenomena in Polish theatre and drama of the past two decades. The powerful political and cultural transformations which occurred shortly after 1989 froze the initial impact of this resentment and even negated its presence – the first suppression seemed to be quite successful, and to promise an unbroken transition from the old to the new. All the denied resentments erupted a few years later, considerably affecting Polish theatre and drama. As a result, patterns of resentment can be easily traced in major performances staged by Krystian Lupa, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Jan Klata and Monika Strzępka, and in plays written by Andrzej Stasiuk, Dorota Masłowska and Paweł Demirski. The experience of resentment forges their latent structures, becomes the object of attack or sympathy, provokes painful emotions, undermines the new ideologies and ridicules the old ones, and finally, provides readers and spectators with an instrument for critically approaching Polish history. This also expresses itself in a speciality of the Polish theatre, which is to evoke and depict the suffering of the humiliated body after it has been inscribed by resentment. Researching these phenomena takes us back to post-war Polish culture and its traumas, which have recently been revived through post-memory strategies, verging on both memory and history. The humiliated body has become the centre of the theatrical cosmos, and it is called on stage to speak out. The voice of resentment remains the most provocative strategy in Polish theatre and drama.
