Reżyseria na przełomie XVIII i XIX wieku a przedstawienia Wojciecha Bogusławskiego

The unitary concept of theatrical performance had been under way to the European stages long before the concepts of directing and producing emerged,as these became part of the professional vocabulary only in the 19th century. In the 18th century, theatre was not yet accorded the status of fine art, enjoyed by painting or poetry, so its artistic qualities were not subject to aesthetic evaluation, and a performance did not have to fulfil the conditions of consistence and stylistic unity that the director would be responsible for. The tendency to treat the elements of theatrical performance as separate, unconnected arts scéniques began to change slowly in the 1760s. Artists and theoreticians started mentioning that there wasa need for unification of various components of theatrical performance intoa whole, from the text, through costumes and decorations, to individual and group acting, to coordinate the tasks of playwriting, acting and decoration making forthe common good. Such thinking, however, was very slow to take hold and itspioneers, i.e. choreographer and theatre reformer Jean G. Noverre, who argued that in theatre “all arts hold hands,” or Diderot postulating to create a “tableau”on-stage, would wait very long for the first palpable results of their appeals. Wojciech Bogusławski was among the first European artists who at the end of the18th century started paying attention to stylistic unity of their productions.