Reimagining Theatre History

Abstract

This article presents the edited volume A History of Polish Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 2022) as a welcome addition to the growing English-language scholarship on Polish theatre. The reviewer appreciates the editors and contributors’ strategy to make the past intelligible through the present. He emphasizes that this strategy contributed to developing a coherent set of articles dedicated to a wide range of topics. As a new source in English, the book will be immensely valuable, both for students and for those interested in finding out more about specific themes in Polish theatre. The scholarship is fresh, and the articles demonstrate connections of the past to the present, emphasizing the importance of each era, not in service to the narrative of progress but rather in Benjamin’s constellation metaphor. The reviewer further notes that the book assumes some knowledge of Polish theatre, Polish culture, and Polish history from the beginning. He argues that the book will therefore not serve as a complete replacement for more traditional histories but rather contributing to the reimagining of how to tell them.