Bücher der Reihe Interdisciplinary Studies in Performance

The book by Monika Talarczyk is devoted to the life and work of Wanda Jakubowska (1907-1998), Polish film director, author of The Last Stage (1948), who is said to be the Mother of All Holocaust Films. She is also considered a pioneer of women's cinema and recognized as the first Polish woman film director who gained worldwide renown.

The examination of the transcendentals of truth, beauty and the good in this work stems from the perspective of Christian humanism, moral psychology and perfecting ourselves. From such a point of departure the book engages in the philosophy of culture and religion while drawing upon ritual, works of high and especially popular culture.

The book discusses the political dramas of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard regarding their employment of the two critical terms used in its title. It provides a new look at the output of the artists in reference to the employment of the grotesque, justifying their classification together with the East European absurdist playwrights.

The book aims to indicate the legitimizing and contestatory function of music, which - being universally present in the public space - plays a vital role in political and social relations. Primarily, it can consolidate the status quo, but also, more interestingly, it can become a tool of changing the system.

The volume concentrates on the deployment of music in diverse political and social conditions. The authors argue that a specific type of music, namely political music, may be identified in the context of both the past and the present. This contention is proved through the analysis of Polish political music in various historical periods.

Jerzy Grotowski and the "Laboratory Theatre" presented his famous performance "The Constant Prince" to Iranian audiences in 1970. Artists who encountered Grotowski in person were fascinated by him. They applied his teachings in their own personal approaches to theatre and regarded themselves later as the people most influenced by Grotowski.

The book focuses on the history and evolution of the national and transnational cinema from Iceland. The author analyses popular topics and narrative strategies in Icelandic films. The research covers local versions of black comedies, road movies, crime stories and figures connected with the motif of struggle between tradition and modernity.

The book analyses selected 19th-century operas based on Shakespeare's plays from the perspective of their relations to the literature, aesthetics and philosophy of the Romantic period. The texts discussed here include Verdi's Macbeth, Otello and Falstaff, Rossini's Otello", Halevy's "The Tempest", Gounod's "Romeo and Juliet" and Thomas's "Hamlet".

The book discusses the practices of Polish buto dancers. The author produces a generalised account of buto training. She explores various body-mind practices and so-called buto techniques used by the dancers. Her argument depicts the sequence of three phases which make up the processual structure of buto training: intro, following and embodiment.

Running off the Anger. British New Wave includes several areas of research that suggest interpreting the cinema of the British New Wave in relation to social realism, the construction of the main characters, popular culture and the way New Wave played with film-making.

Die Rückkehr des Chores in die Theaterstücke und Inszenierungen der Gegenwart macht erkennbar, eine wie hohe Aktualität dieses seit der Antike bekannte Strukturelement des Dramas hat. Dabei werden die antiken Formen für die Bedingungen der Gegenwart überarbeitet und wirkungsvoll weiterentwickelt. Die Beiträge des Bandes leuchten vielfältige Formen der Aneignung und Neubildung aus. Die Position des Chores zur Bühnenhandlung, seine Dimensionen, Artikulationsweisen, Bewegungsmomente werden ebenso in den Aufsätzen diskutiert, wie seine Stellung zur Geschichte und sein Beitrag zum Verhältnis von Individualität und Gemeinschaft. In den Ergebnissen des Bandes wird deutlich, von welcher Wichtigkeit der Chor für das gegenwärtige Drama und die aktuelle Theaterarbeit ist.

The book presents a constructivist theory of relations between artistic forms and religious phenomena ("recapitulatory aesthetics"). The main theoretical concepts and knowledge resources are religion as a cultural system, social history, and aesthetics of main drama genres developed in the Middle Ages.

The work presents performances of identity of Polish Tatars who are followers of Islam. Based on research and observations, it provides reconstruction of patterns, or performative scripts, of certain holidays, rituals and rules of daily life. Their liturgical calendar interweaves with a natural cycle of rites of passage.

The book features a detailed analysis and interpretation of "The Saragossa Manuscript" (1964) by Wojciech Jerzy Has. The interpretative key is the director's reference to the aesthetics of various art trends, starting with baroque, through romanticism, symbolism, surrealism and the culture of Orient.

The monograph focuses on the twentieth-century American political opera, written from 1976 onwards in three new genres: video-opera (created by Steve Reich), opera based on contemporary topics that are manifested with documentary fidelity (created by John Adams) and a portrait opera (created by Philip Glass).

This book focuses on Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, philosopher and controversial artist. It expresses the opinions of philosophers, museologists and artists, for whom Stanislaw Ignacy Witkacy's 130th birthday anniversary became an opportunity to view his works from the perspective of postmodernity.

This book examines performative practices of Anglo-Saxon monks and provides fresh insights into the origins of early English theatre. The author argues that modern European theatre was reinvented in medieval monasteries and demonstrates the fundamental incongruences between ancient and Christian performativity.