Teatr staropolski w teatrze Piotra Cieplaka

The starting point for the findings presented in the article was a detailed analysis of Historyja o chwalebnym Zmartwychwstaniu Pańskim productions. Piotr Cieplak staged the mystery play by Mikołaj of Wilkowiecko three times: first at the Wrocławski Teatr Współczesny in 1993, then at the Dramatyczny Theatre in Warsaw a year later, and finally as a television adaptation for Teatr Telewizji (TV Teatre) in 1995. The author asserts that even though Cieplak had completed three other productions at the Wilam Horzyca Theatre in Toruń it was “Historyja”... that was truly his debut and something of a manifesto. It is there that he has indicated whattype of theatre he intends to make, what problems he considers worth discussing and in what forms he intends to do it. First impressions notwithstanding, it is argued that it was not the past but rather the present that inspired the director to stage “Historyja”..., or more precisely, it was liquid modernity and the changes it had been undergoing. Yet his goal was not only to show these changes. Had it been only that he could have used some other text. The fact that he chose “Historyja”...means that his intentions were more complex. In the author’s opinion, Cieplak meant not only to present his observations on liquid modernity but also to remind the audience that which was old, primordial, constant and captured bythe fundamental Christian concepts present in “Historyja”.... In liquid modernity these terms changed their meanings. Cieplak indicated these changes but at the same time – in a modern way, adequate for the sensibility and expectations of new audience – reminded the contemporaries of the old, primitive meanings. Cieplak’s theatre, though emerging from the “here and now,” leads into a universe that transcends earthly reality. It is an attempt at rooting inhabitants of the liquid worldback in the Christian cosmos. “Historyja”... was, in the author’s view, a founding act of this endeavour, in which Cieplak has persisted ever since.