Chapter 6 - Mapping Theatre (II)

Summary

Małgorzata Leyko’s study of German theatre in Polish lands offers a transnational panorama that resists ‘methodological nationalism’. She interprets this history in various modes from coexistence and expansion to domination or inspiration. At different historical moments, theatre was the site of exclusion or the space of Polish–German exchange. German theatre cultures offered new models and artistic strategies, while during the Nazi occupation and the Second World War theatre was often a site of ideological indoctrination and complicity, or a refuge for those trapped and persecuted in ghettos and camps. Aleksandra Sakowska then demonstrates that Shakespeare has not been passively received by Polish culture. She argues that the process of translating Shakespeare into Polish has complicated and enriched plays like Hamlet and made them generative of new meanings, both within Polish territories and abroad. The multiple forms of translation and adaptation of Shakespeare over the centuries are not positioned as a purely ‘foreign influence’ or ‘cultural sociability’.