BIM-BOM and the Afanasjew Family Circus

Extract

A number of amateur student theatres that expressed a longing for something other than drabness and conformity in art and life arose quite spontaneously in Warsaw, Cracow, and other principal Polish cities toward the end of the Stalinist period in Poland (1950-1955). They developed chiefly as a reaction against the boredom and the constraint of the official professional theatre. Of all these theatres, the group that developed in Gdansk, Bim-Bom and its later off-shoot, the Afanasjew Family Circus, was unique in its emphasis on the visual, in its combination of images from painting and sculpture with traditional forms of entertainment. Bim-Bom was essentially a nonliterary theatre that sought its inspiration both in the fine arts and in the popular arts of circus, carnival, street fair, music hall, and film. Its prime aim was to amuse. Bim-Bom was popular avant-garde.