Ewa Tomaszewska

Department of Community Arts and Culture and Aesthetic Education The Institute of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies

Cieszyn Affiliate University of Silesia

POLEN THEATRE OF PLAY IN POLAND 'Theatre is as old as mankind.'

1 wrote Margot Berthold in her History of Theatre. 'Play is older

than culture,'2begins Johan Huizinga's book Homo Ludens. There seems to be a

concurrence between theatre and play. But above all they have accompanied man from the very beginning. It may seem, however, that the order ought to be reversed; play would appear to be more primordial, since it existed before culture. Huizinga writes; 'animals did not wait at all for human beings to teach them to play.'

3 But theatre is linked to culture, it creates

culture. There is a close and obvious relationship between play and theatre and if the nature of play according to Huizinga is assumed one may arrive at the conclusion that theatre is a form of play. Is it not an unconstrained activity which is not real life � but pretence, a game of make-believe which is played out within defined boundaries of time and space, containing within it its own unfolding and meaning, with the element of suspense playing a particularly crucial role? As a consequence of its existence does it not create specific social relationships, is it not in some way mysterious, not different from the world around it? And if we take this one step too far the statement that theatre emerges out of play would perhaps be easier to accept. It is not surprising, therefore, that theatre and play can easily be linked together, woven into one whole. In the Polish context Jan Dorman, the creator of the theatrical movement called theatre of play, discovered and put this into practice. It did not take place overnight, however, but only after many years of artistic enquiry, observation and theatrical experimentation. Jan Dorman was trained as a pedagogue, working as a country schoolmaster in the eastern regions of Poland at the beginning of his professional career. From childhood he was fascinated by ritual, including religious ritual, folk customs and folklore. Apart from teaching he painted, organised choirs and ran a theatre, which all testifies to his restless artistic nature and his constant need search for something. He later moved to Kraków, where in 1938 he was accepted by the Academy of Fine Arts. He did not stop working though, firstly running a choir in a military unit and then later being a houseparent in the Tram Drivers' Residential Home (Dom Rodzinny Tramwajarzy). It was a period during which he carefully observed children's play, which not only fascinated him but inspired his thinking about theatre. He was able to initiate games which would, unexpectedly for the players, transform themselves into theatre. He later made us of this ability and fascination with children's lore in his work with children at the Inter-school Children's Theatre in Sosnowiec (Międzyszkolny Teatr Dziecka w Sosnowcu). This initiative, which Dorman named 'children playing at theatre,' took place after the Second World War. 1Margot Berthold, History of the Theatre; Wydawnictwo Artystyczne i Filmowe, Warszawa 1980

translated by D. Zmij-Zielinska 2Johan Huizinga Homo ludens � play as a source of culture, Czytelnik, Warszawa 1985, translated by

M. Kurecka and W. Wirpsza 3ibid

2

In his work with children he rejected the method of imitating professional theatre. He trusted children's theatrical instinct and the theatrical power of children's play. He combined various forms of expression; folk songs, children's games, counting games; presenting them in a fresh way to make them comprehensible. Theatricality, according to him, is all around us. We have only to discover it, bring it into existence and share it with others. The Experimental Children's Theatre ZZG (Eksperymentalny Teatr Dziecka ZZG), established in 1947, played a particularly important role in Dorman's creative development. It was an innovative attempt to create a theatre which married children's (amateur) theatre with professional theatre. 'The two faces of theatre are children playing at theatre, i.e. theatre of expression and theatre performed by actors for children, i.e. theatre of impression.'

4 What Dorman probably had in

mind was the mutual inspiration these two worlds of theatre could give each other, from which the first was intended to contribute the joy of play, authenticity, freshness of associations and the power of discovery in childish metaphor, while the other was intended to contribute the artistic form to this theatrical venture. 'The theatre that really fascinates me has its origins too in the children's playground. I have taken something of the real world from it � children's play.'

5 His idea, even from our present day perspective, was remarkable, ahead

of its time, even utopian. It comes as no surprise, therefore, to learn that the project of partnership between children and professionals came to nothing and after the premičre the whole plan was abandoned. It nonetheless indicates the direction of Dorman's interests. In this way the first stage of Dorman's artistic development was, in the words of Professor Henryk Jurkowski, 'an apprenticeship in the world of the child,'

6 an important lesson in

convention, familiarisation with the world of children's play and a transformation of these observations and experiences into children's theatre. It would seem that Dorman was an outstanding pupil since the theatre he was later to create was described as "an ABC of metaphors carried out by children through play."'

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The establishment of a professional company called The Zagłębie Children's Theatre (Teatr Dzieci Zagłębia) and based in Będzin was the beginning of the next stage in Dorman's artistic development. More than anything this was for Dorman a time of experimentation and of wrestling with various forms of theatre, particularly with the convention of fairy-tale realism

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which was de riguer in Polish dolls' theatres at that time. The following stage in Dorman's creative development was the formation of his own theatrical style, his own language and theatrical conventions. What was Dorman's theatre like? Most importantly, Dorman's theatre was neither realistic nor had a specific plot. His overriding principle was theatricalness. 'Theatre takes place on a stage, before the audience's eyes. All of its mechanisms are revealed. Space, props, décor, and finally actors � all of them change their functions, and make the dimension of theatricalness more

4Henryk Jurkowski, introduction to Zabawa dzieci w teatr (Children Playing at Theatre) J. Dorman,

COK, Warszawa 1981 5Jan Dorman, The Doll in Theatrical Productions (Lalka w inscenizacji) Teatr Lalek, 1968, no.1-2

6Henryk Jurkowski, Dorman's Theatrical Method (Metoda Teatru Dormana), Teatr Lalek, 1987, no.1-2

7Krystyna Miłobędzka, Understanding Play (Zrozumieć zabawę), Teatr Lalek, 1996, no.1

8'fairy-tale realism is a fairy-tale treated seriously like a probable occurrence', H. Jurkowski's definition.

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complex.'9 It was perhaps for that reason that he often made use of the convention of a

theatre within a theatre. So it was with A Midsummer Night's Dream, in the play The Duck and Hamlet (Kaczka i Hamlet) and in The Pony (Konik). He wrote in the programme for A Midsummer Night's Dream; 'We come across a theatre within a theatre in several of Shakespeare's works and put great emphasis upon it in our play. Here our 'mechanicals' are not only playing for the 'court' � they are also playing the court, for whom they are playing.'

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In fact all convention; conventionality of gesture, step, posture, costume and speech, fascinated Dorman. He also understood play as a repertoire of gestures and mime, as a particular rhythm of activity, as a ritual established over the centuries � a ritual of figures written in the dirt, of steps essential to carry out the rules of the game, of magic poses which protect us from danger. Dorman linked these conventions, in his dramatisations, according to the 'principle of theatricalisation'. In the programme for his adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince he wrote, 'Three worlds. Three conventions. The first world, the nearest to the audience is Brechtian theatre. The actors acting in this world appeared straight from a staging of Brecht in a Polish theatre. Most probably the first actor is playing one of the characters from Threepenny Opera, while the second came onto the stage in a costume from the play Mother Courage. The actors in the second world ought to be associated with the theatre of Beckett. A helpless, paralysed person and space shrunk down to a square opening cut out of the floor of the stage. The actors from the third world are playing out their own subject from the convention of the theatre of children's play'.

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In a similar sense Dorman was interested in folk tradition, which became the second greatest inspiration for his work. He treated games and children's play as conventions which are familiar and recognisable to children � even if not always and not completely comprehensible � in a similar way to how he treated folk tradition. He used the structure of play but gave it new meaning. Such drama demanded intellectual effort from the audience and for many it was not totally clear. Some critics accused Dorman's plays of 'obscuring the dramatic message, in which there are no "points of reference for the audience", and a lack of signposts defining the direction and boundaries of associations'.

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Such theatricalising projects needed a special text. For that reason Dorman built his script in the form of a literary collage juxtaposing fragments of epic texts, philosophical tales, lyric works, folk verses, children's counting games, songs and so forth. The play The Pony (Konik) starts with the words of Hamlet and then into it the text Dorman wove folk texts and children's songs, a few sentences from Andersen and Gałczyński, some extracts from Voltaire's Candide, the song about the swallow from The Happy Prince and other words, sometimes difficult to recognise. He used similar methods in most of his pieces. 'This collage of little scraps was intended to create new ideas, new emotional experiences, new Dormanian judgements about the world. And it did.'

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The movements on the stage were strictly conventionalised. Ritual gestures, processions, dance, mechanical or spontaneous movements appear in the plays. The same thing applies to the way the actors interpret their lines. They speak rhythmically, the lack of interpretation removes the sense from the words, they speak in one breath, they whisper, they sing, they

9H. Jurkowski, Dorman's Theatrical Method (Metoda Teatru Dormana), Teatr Lalek, 1987, no.1-2

10ibid.

11ibid.

12K. Milobedzka, Cosmogonia and Fable in Children's Theatre (Kosmogonia i fabuła w teatrze dla

Dzieci), in Art for Children � Theory � Reception � Effect (Sztuka dla dziecka � teoria � recepcja � oddzialywanie), Poznan 13

H. Jurkowski, Dorman's Theatrical Method (Metoda Teatru Dormana), Teatr Lalek, 1987, no.1-2

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speak with exaggerated interpretation or ecstatically, they speak chorally. Rhythm is the basic means of expression, the foundation of the drama. It is not surprising that the characters in Dorman's plays were not sufficiently individualised. It meant that actors could play many parts in the same play. In a moment each character could become somebody completely different. What is more, characters from one play could appear in a completely different play. This led to the creation of characters who would always appear, and even certain characters were associated with particular actors, as used to happen in the commedia dell'arte. 'Changes of pace in a drama led Dorman towards ritual. What else is slowed-down rhythm if not a way of emphasising the importance of a ceremony.'

14 Are not ritual, including religious

ones, traditional folk customs, and children's play similar to each other? Huizinga writes, 'In our conception of play the difference between faith and pretence is removed. That conception is linked in an unaffected way with the conception of holiness and religiosity.'

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Today Dorman's interest in child's play and traditional folk customs does not surprise nor the obvious connection he drew between them. It was from them that he derived the structure of his drama. Dorman combines theatre with puppet theatre, although puppet is often used as props or objects. 'Apart from the props used according to their usual function, which are part of an actor's costume or part of the set, in Dorman's productions props are also used by actors instead of words, e.g. the balloons in The Happy Prince. The balloon becomes persona dramatis in the moment that it is burst with a needle. A prop which an actor addresses only once also takes on human qualities, becomes persona dramatis, plays its part � not least when it is discarded or put down by the actor (e.g. the china figures of children carried by actors protesting against war and then placed on the stage in such a position that they might be trodden on at any moment).'

16

14

ibid. 15

J. Huizinga Homo ludens, Czytelnik, Warszawa 1980 16

K. Milobedzka, Cosmogonia and Fable in Children's Theatre (Kosmogonia i fabula w teatrze dla Dzieci), in Art for Children � Theory � Reception � Effect (Sztuka dla dziecka � teoria � recepcja � oddziaływanie), Poznań 1977

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photo 1

Szczęśliwy Książę based on The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde; theatrical adaptation by Jan Dorman; premiere 23.IV. 1967. (photo by Zdzislaw Kempa) The photo shows two of the characters; a hat stand and ballons. Elements of various realities build the stage-space without defining the time-frame or the type of text being presented. However it is generally the interior of a house (a hat stand instead of a monument, a wardrobe instead of a building, a table, a bed, chairs, a piano). It is � as Krystyna Miłobędzka writes � the interior of a house, which something incomprehensible bursts into.'

17 It is worth noting that most of the props and elements of scenery came from

non-theatrical reality. Beer barrels were the main feature of the set in the play What time is it? (Która godzina). Here is the story of their journey to the stage recounted by Dorman himself; 'I walk past a brewery every day. Delivery lorries leave through the gates. These lorries are carry damaged beer barrels. The rotting barrels fascinate me. I'd like to see them on the stage. The directory at the brewery is a cheerful fellow, he ought to let me have a few. I was right. Two big ones and three small ones.'

18 There is no doubt that lack of funds forced

Dorman to seek the cheapest way of doing things. Nevertheless he managed to give it value. '... the barrels placed on the stage may demonstrate all possible transformations � whether spiritual or material. So a transformation must occur. In the theatre it isn't difficult to bring one about. An artist writes "Army" on the barrel, and the barrel, though still empty, begins to mean something because of what has been written. A change has taken place in all of us. Now when we see a barrel on the stage we think: there is gunpowder in the barrel, because 17

ibid. 18

J. Dorman, Children Playing at Theatre (Zabawa dzieci w teatr), COK, Warszawa 1981

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the barrel has changed its function and is now being used in another way. The barrel standing on the stage is no longer ordinary; it has become a symbol. To sum up; the barrel first served peace: now it is serving war. And now the barrels, placed randomly on the stage, will be the play's main props. With their help the director was able to stage an air-raid (actors throw papier-mâché helmets on the barrels, suggesting an air-raid). Because of the barrels the problem of movement on the stage has been solved. The barrels will be rolled on, stood up, and used as chairs.'

19 These objects, the props, have become a source of metaphor.

photo 2

Która godzina (What time is it) by Zbigniew Wojciechowski; theatrical adaptation by Jan Dorman; premiere 30.VII.1964. (photo by Zdzisław Kempa) Barrels on the stage and figures of children on the piano. I think, however, that there was more to these objects taken from real life; they had their own history. Just as children want new toys but love their old and worn out ones. J. M. Barrie writes as follows in his wonderful The Adventures of Peter Pan. 'Expensive shop-bought ships do not conceal any mysteries inside them and for that reason the sight of a shop-bought ship will never evoke in an adult the dearest of childhood memories. For only ships made from sticks are laden down with the most precious memories. A shop-bought ship barely dares to sail around on a lake while a ship made from a stick sails fearlessly on the crest of the heaving ocean.'

20 The objects which Dorman chose to create the theatrical world

of his plays appeared in the spirit of these "ships made from sticks", they possessed their own 'soul' and were susceptible to the imagination of the creator as well as the audience. 19

ibid. 20

J. M. Barrie, The Adventures of Peter Pan, Księgarnia św. Wojciecha, Poznań 1990

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That is not all. In Dorman's works theatrical space extends beyond the boundaries of the stage, into the aisle and even out of the theatre itself. For example the play The Pony (Konik), which was aimed at small children, was meant to run in several phases, according to Dorman's description. The first was the actual performance. The second phase took place first of all in the theatre foyer where the children, after having seen the play, came across an immense horse filling the whole of the foyer. Then when they left the theatre in the street they saw, 'the same enormous horse standing tethered to a tree.'

21 The third phase was to

take place a few days later; horses were to be lined up outside the nursery, only to disappear 'after the children's afternoon nap.'

22 The fourth phase of the spectacle was to take place

once again a few days later � after the snow had fallen � when a mass of horse-people would gallop into the nursery's playground.

23

photo 3

A child�s drawing showing horse � people. It is a Christmas folk custom from the Żywiec region (southern Poland close to the Beskid mountains). Dorman used a similar idea in the play The Duck and Hamlet. I will quote from Henryk Jurkowski's account, 'One day, actors from the theatre brought a huge duck on wheels to a nursery and then vanished. The duck was left with the children. The teacher read the children a story about a Man Duck and a Lady Duck with the duck from the theatre among them. Another day she taught them the song about the Speckled Duck (Kaczka pstra). On 21

typed manuscript of the Pony (Konik), Jan Dorman, Będzin, 1974 22

ibid. 23

This is linked to Christmas traditions from the Żywiec region; people dressed in costumes walk through the villages, some dressed as Herod, with special caps and horse costumes hanging from their shoulders (see fig.)

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another day she told the children a story about the duck from the theatre and what was happening outside. She gradually helped the children to become accustomed to the duck. After a few days the children greeted the duck spontaneously, told it about various things, often as a whispered secret. The children also drew pictures of the duck, showed them to the duck and danced around it to music from a gramophone. Finally on the fifteenth day of its stay it disappeared from the nursery. This is how the first part of the experiment ended. (...) The next stage was to move the children and the duck to new surroundings. On visiting the theatre the children found their duck on stage as part of a play.'

24

photo 4

Kaczka i Hamlet (The Duck and Hamlet) written and directed by Jan Dorman, premiere 30.IX.1968. (photo by Zdzisław Kempa). Thus something from the strange, unknown world of the theatre � a duck � suddenly meant something to the children, became part of their reality. 'The further away you get from the play (The Duck and Hamlet), the more it intrigues, the more we transform it into something for ourselves. Everything in it is delicate, barely touched. An actor places his hands on another actor's shoulder as if rousing a child from sleep. This play has no limits, this theatre full of soft hints, voices and whispers from childhood. And it isn't important at all what is said from the stage but how it is said. That actors speak softly, that the rhythmic accent (the script being read) falls on 'Daddy', on 'two hundred', that ultimately the script, repeated several times, gives the illusion of being out of breath, as if after running too fast.'

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As we did in The Pony (Konik), we see how in The Duck and Hamlet (Kaczka i Hamlet) the space of the theatre extends beyond the theatre's walls. And not only the space but the play

24

Henryk Jurkowski, introduction to Zabawa dzieci w teatr (Children Playing at Theatre) J. Dorman, COK, Warszawa 1981 25

K. Miłobędzka, My Dorman Duck (Moja kaczka Dormana), review published in the book by J. Dorman Zabawa dzieci w teatr (Children Playing at Theatre).

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itself becomes one with life, the theatre becomes intertwined with reality. It is Dorman's enquiry within the realm of very young children's theatre that seems most fascinating and inspiring even if it was not completely fulfilled and remained only in the form of ideas. 'Theatre for nursery children has its own special character. It is a theatre of play created by children. It is of vital importance that the process of the child's development through play is continued as long as possible. The longer the child plays, the more it develops. Theatre ought to be an instrument which helps to develop the child's imagination. Children ought to share in the making of theatre.'

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Dorman's shows were internally dualistic. In his plays there were always two groups performing � actors and props representing the adult world and those representing the world of children. The two groups differed markedly in the way they expressed their message but were simultaneously alike � convention is the principle of their existence. However there was also something which existed between these two worlds. Krystyna Miłobędzka named it the "misfit", a character who behaved "differently", unconventionally. This is someone who does not fit into either of the worlds. One could conclude that this is precisely the situation small children find themselves in. Children are conscious that they are not capable of taking in the vastness of the world surrounding them. Nevertheless they still have a powerful need to create order and unity from the fragments of the world that they only partly understand. It is time to return to the chaos in Dorman's plays which was touched upon earlier and which made it difficult for adults in particular to understand them. Krystyna Miłobędzka insists that in Dorman's works the motif of a child's journey to understand the world repeats itself; a coherent whole slowly emerges from the chaos. In this way chaos becomes order and makes sense. Audience participation in the creation of the play is directly linked to this. This participation does not depend, of course, on placing children in the drama but on drawing the audience into co-creating the action by engaging their intellectual faculties and sensitivity, on activating the child's imagination and on the interactive nature of this process. In this way Dorman came close in his thinking to the theatre of community.

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It is theatre with a free structure. Richard Schechner defined this type of game as follows; 'Its core is the rhythm of life (life - rythmos) � eating, breathing, dreaming � wakefulness, day � night, the seasons, the phases of the moon etc. As long as the rhythms are not manifested in any life journey, a form without beginning, middle nor end remains. One complete rhythm represents the cycle; but a given cycle ends only in order that the next cycle may begin; there is no resolution.'

28 It may be said that all plays which derive their structure from

children's play will have a free structure. All the characteristics of Dorman's theatre which I have attempted to gather together demonstrate that this theatre was not easy and demanded a good deal of intellectual effort from the audience, which for children was reasonably easy, but for adults more difficult. Dorman wrote, '... I am not afraid to put on incomprehensible plays, composed only of 26

J. Dorman, My Theatre (Mój teatr), The Doll's Theatre, 1968, no.1-2 27

In the book The Theatre of Community (Teatr współnoty), Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków, 1972, Kazimierz Braun describes the phenomenon of the theatre of community in the following way: 'A theatrical play would be an enduring social process of reciprocal communion. A process of joint creation (...) It is an extreme but logical consequence relying on the understanding of theatre as an artistic process in time and as a social phenomenon. It is clear that theatre understood in those terms at last breaks away competely from the idea of a play performed by actors for the audience. It concerns theatre created together. Not for but with, together. 28

Quotation used by Ewa Serafinowska in Drama, games and play in doll's theatre (Dramat, gra i zabawa w teatrze lalek), Master's dissertation under Professor Jerzy Ziomka of the Institute of Polish Philology at the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poznań 1972.

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images and associations. It is my principle that theatre ought never to explain, but merely to suggest. Theatre exists to make people more sensitive! I do not allow the audience to passively watch the play but I force them to be constantly vigilant, to be active, to think.'

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To consolidate those words I would like to present a quotation from a review of the play The Pony (Konik) by Teresa Węgrowska, which in my opinion could serve as a conclusion to the reflections mentioned above, but made from the other side of the stage; 'Dorman diligently collects drawings which the children did at nursery. Some of them have commentaries at the bottom. "The black man was sad and loved his little pony very much". The word 'love' does not appear once in the play. This is a child's interpretation noted down by its teacher.'

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Jan Dorman's experiments have been continued and developed in the work of Krystyna Miłobędzka in collaboration with such artists as Leokadia Serafinowicz, Wojciech Wieczorkiewicz and Jan Berdyszak. Krystyna Miłobędzka, in her analysis of Dorman's work, precisely defined the function and form of children's theatre, basing her theses on her own experiments, experiences and observations and inspired by the work of Jean Piaget concerning children's symbolic games and the work of Janusz Korczak and other contemporary pedagogues. She focussed on how the process of metaphor comes about, the language of gestures, the language of words, the construction of plays � both "free" and without a fictitious narrative, direct theatre of participation, and children's play. She managed to synthesise Jan Dorman's work in a theoretical reflection and create guidelines for the creators of the new children's theatre, a theatre in which children are partners and even co-creators of the show. But above all she focussed on the role of theatre for children. She regarded that as theatre's most crucial educational mission. I consider her work to be inestimably important and significant for the simple reason that she created a specific dramatic literature which we can now refer to. Jan Dorman did not leave any completed dramatic works, he created performances. And of course the transitory nature of theatre makes Krystyna Miłobędzka's achievements priceless. Time does not allow me to analyse her works but, using the play The Fatherland (Ojczyzna) as an example I would nonetheless like to familiarise the reader with her method of building texts in the new children's theatre, the theatre of play. 'The Fatherland is my attempt at seeing, discussing and explaining what the word "fatherland" means. The most important thing is that it is a process of construction, in the material and intellectual sense of the concept. Three constructions representing a formal division of art, slowly and quite precisely indicate the movement towards the unity of that concept � from being taught to speak, through play and conflict to the recollection of what everything meant and means for the main characters.'

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For that reason the basic props of that play are building bricks used, like children do, as substitutes for objects and even for concepts. Something can be built of building bricks, they can be played with, they are objects which children know very well. We can recognise Dormanian thinking here in the basing of the show on forms and rules which are familiar and dear to the audience and on the multi-functionality of objects. During the staging of The Fatherland in Lublin the children even took some of the building bricks (not being used at that moment by the actors) and began to build their own forms themselves. The actors had to integrate that game into the performance. This is theatre

29

Jan Dorman, My Theatre (Mój teatr), Teatre Lalek, 1968, no.1-2 30

Jan Dorman, Children Playing at Theatre (Zabawa dzieci w teatr), COK, Warszawa 1981 31

conversation with Krystyna Miłobędzka Free space for the imagination (Wolne miejsca dla wyobraźni) printed in Filia; the institutional magazine of the Cieszyn Affiliate of the University of Silesia, 1995 no.25

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which is responsive to the audience, with audience participation and with elements of theatrical improvisation. The five actors playing the five parts; Building Brick, House, Road, Mister Army and Speech, make use of the simplest situation, the simplest conflict comprehensible to even the youngest spectator. Thus a building made of building bricks falls down and hits one of the characters � Building Brick. The natural reaction is a scream, 'Aaaagh!'

32 The remaining

characters react in a natural way by laughing, 'Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.' Road reconstructs the building and points at it proudly, 'Oh! oh! oh!' The other characters react with amazement, 'Ooo....' Every child understands these situations since they know them from their own lives. Every day at home or nursery something similar takes place. The whole play is based on these kinds of extremely simple incidents. Later in the play other games are included; word games (a sequence of words of which the first three are meaningful but the following ones become a game which plays with their sounds; 'House, mummy, daddy, dodo, yo-yo, you-you', 'make-believe' games; playing at weddings, at wolf and sheep, games with associations; the player throws a building brick and shouts, 'light', 'heavy' or 'fire', and another character has to catch the brick in the manner of the word. Here we are dealing with a composition of various incidents without a plot which, over the course of the whole play, communicate a particular message. 'The principle serves to show the process of how complex states � in particular psychological and physical � come about and therefore the development of the state and society; the development of a person from childhood to maturity, from isolation to family, from family to nation.'

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From the beginning of the play the audience are witness to the most simple situations, creating a kind of community. It is not necessary, indeed, to explain the plot of the play (which would be contrary to the author's purposes). I would say that the meaning of the play arises more from feeling and impression than from intellectual reflection, reaching out to a child's sensitivity and imagination. A child watching the play will receive the sense of community referred to in the title The Fatherland rather than a definition of the term. In Miłobędzka's texts a great open space, which the author names "space for the imagination", is left for the director and for theatre to fill. This represents the new approach to children's dramatic literature. It is worth mentioning here that some of Miłobędzka's texts were written over thirty years ago. It was a different world then, to mention only how incomparably small a role television played in children's lives. It was a reality without CDs, computers or the internet. Since that time a great deal has changed, the world of children's play has also undergone a dramatic transformation. Today children play at different things than they did thirty years ago; some toys have been forgotten, new ones have appeared, new characters have appeared in children's games and the new reality is reflected in contemporary children's play. If Miłobędzka bases her work on structures of play which are now historical and uses counting games which today's children have never heard of, do her plays communicate to the children of today? Owing to the flexible structure of Miłobędzka's plays it is easy to substitute different games and counting games since they are only a form to express new meanings. This is where Miłobędzka's work meets Dorman's. Summing up, it ought to be said that the theatrical experiments of Jan Dorman, and later Krystyna Miłobędzka and the group of artists (Leokadia Serafinowicz, Wojciech

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Quoted fragment of a text based on X from K. Miłobędzka's book Siała baba mak. � Word games for the theatre (Siała baba mak. Gry słowne dla teatru), Wydawnictwo A, Wrocław, 1995 33

quotation taken from notes appended to the manuscript of the play Fatherland (Ojczyzna), K. Miłobędzka

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Wieczorkiewicz and Jan Berdyszak) from the circle of the Marcinek Doll's Theatre in Poznań, traced out a road for a new children's theatre. This theatre, known as theatre of play, operates according to its own specific set of rules of play and children's games. Its structure is flexible and it is built through direct contact with children's audiences. It creates a spectacle without a plot or one composed of fragments of many stories, making a theatrical mosaic. This theatre is a synthesis of theatrical methods, a theatre of imagination, a theatre of metaphor. Its aim is to stimulate and develop the imagination, to make one think, and also to show the world in all its complexity, with its dangers and joys and in this way to help young audiences to find their way in the world. I would like to add that at the present time the formula of theatre of play begun by Jan Dorman and defined in dramatic literature by Krystyna Miłobędzka has become astonishingly popular. Other phenomena such as participation theatre and theatre of the object have arisen. It seems, however, that contemporary dramatists lack a deep and serious approach to children, their audiences. In many performances for children one can identify particular characteristics of theatre of play already mentioned, but the subject matter is dealt with superficially. Nevertheless this kind of theatre is really appreciated by children and still gives great pleasure to its creators as well its audiences. Photographs: 1 � Szczęśliwy Książę based on The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde; theatrical adaptation by Jan Dorman; premiere 23.IV. 1967. (photo by Zdzislaw Kempa) The photo shows two of the characters; a hat stand and ballons. 2 � Która godzina (What time is it) by Zbigniew Wojciechowski; theatrical adaptation by Jan Dorman; premiere 30.VII.1964. (photo by Zdzisław Kempa) Barrels on the stage and figures of children on the piano. 3 - A child�s drawing showing horse � people. It is a Christmas folk custom from the Żywiec region (southern Poland close to the Beskid mountains). 4 - Kaczka i Hamlet (The Duck and Hamlet) written and directed by Jan Dorman, premiere 30.IX.1968. (photo by Zdzisław Kempa).