DVE053 Pankowski and Theatre as the Medium of Memory (Agata Chalupnik)

Faculty of Arts
Autumn 2017
Extent and Intensity
2/0/0. 1 credit(s). Type of Completion: z (credit).
Teacher(s)
Mgr. Eliška Kubartová, Ph.D. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
prof. PhDr. Margita Havlíčková
Department of Theatre Studies – Faculty of Arts
Contact Person: Mgr. Karolína Stehlíková, Ph.D.
Supplier department: Department of Theatre Studies – Faculty of Arts
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
there are 9 fields of study the course is directly associated with, display
Syllabus (in Czech)
  • Camp in Auschwitz? No, it is not a pun. Or maybe it is? In my lecture I would like to examine the works of Marian Pankowski, Polish novelist, playwright and an Auschwitz survivor who spent most of his life in Brussels. The style of his camp memories is unique. Pankowski confronts the aesthetics of the sublime and the topos of „the inexpressible” with the aesthetics of the obscenity. The pictures he uses are often drastic and grotesque. His memoryof the camp is embodied and sensual. Quite often he uses in his plays the idea of „theatre inside theatre”, thereby exposing theatricality of the represented world and the „theatrical” nature of the camp itself.
  • I’d like to focus on his play Making theatre over the saint borsch. Some years after the war,somewhere in the eastern Europe, we witness the preparation to the anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp. Two former prisoners (under the supervision of the president of the association of the prisoners) are preparing a theatre show to celebrate it. The President acts as a censor of their memories and as a guardian of the official and heroic narrative of memory. What is excluded from the show is the grey zone (narrative of camp memory is always black and white), obscene pictures of the body in the camp, but most of all – love between men: the relationship between German capo and his young Polish pipel. First question is the subject: homosexual men belong to the so called „forgotten victims of the Nazi regime”. The second question is the form and the style: is the idea of Susan Sontag’s „camp” applicable here? Is Pankowski’s aesthetics „queer”? What it would mean here? The third one – is the question of theatre as the medium of memory.
  • Agata Chałupnik, PhD, graduated Theatre Studies at The Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw (1996) and postgraduate studies in Institute of Polish Culture at The University of Warsaw (2001), where she has been working since her PhD. She is co-editor of the readers Anthropology of the performance (Antropologia widowisk, 2005, 2010), Anthropology of the body (Antropologia ciała, 2008) and co-author of the book Polish customs. XXth century in short articles (Obyczaje polskie. Wiek XX w krótkich hasłach, 2008). The author of the books They waved their skirts to become standard-bearers. Zapolska and Nałkowska about female experience of the body (2004) and „Don’t make a drama out of a memory!” Auschwitz in the works by Marian Pankowski (2017). She is a member of the project „HyPaTia. Kobieca Historia Polskiego teatru. Feministyczny Projekt Badawczy” (HyPaTia. Feminine History of Polish Theatre. A Feminist Re-search Project). Recent fields of interest are women in history of Polish theatre and a theatre as the medium of memory.
Teaching methods (in Czech)
Přednáška; předmět je vyučován blokově 25. 10. od 15.50 do 17.30.
Assessment methods (in Czech)
Kredity budou uděleny za účast.
Language of instruction
English
Further comments (probably available only in Czech)
The course is taught: in blocks.
General note: IV angličtině. Pro získání kreditů je vyžadována účast na přednášce. In English.
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