The same is true this year. The Zgorzelec Theatre Meetings will open on 30 October with the performance “My Wife’s Husband”, presented by actors from the C.K. Norwid Theatre in Jelenia Góra. There will also be performances by, among others, Aldona Jankowska and Agnieszka Wajs. Poetry concerts by Marek Dyjak and Lech Dyblik are also planned.
In this invitation, however, we would like to draw your attention to a special event, an extraordinary evening during which the past of Zgorzelec and Wrocław theatre will intertwine with the present and the future. This evening will take place on 7 November, and to avoid missing anything, it is worth arriving at MDK as early as 4 p.m.
We will begin with the opening of an exhibition devoted to the Teatr Ziemi Zgorzeleckiej. Today, perhaps few people know that the theatre on the Neisse was one of the first in post-war Poland! It was established as early as December 1945, when Poles still constituted a minority in what was then Zgorzelice! Even then, a small group of pioneers and former soldiers came together for rehearsals at the former Sanssouci restaurant in today’s Ujazd. Marian Dąbrowski took charge of the ensemble, and one of its first premieres was the comedy “Deputy or Chimney Sweep”.
Other sources give priority to the plays “The Subtenant” or “Revue”. What is certain, however, is that audiences could see the first performance as early as the beginning of 1946, meaning that TZZ can be regarded as the oldest Polish theatre in Lower Silesia! The exhibition will feature memorabilia from both the theatre’s first pioneering years and the period when the stage was led by Marian Szałecki, which resulted in perhaps the greatest successes of Teatr Ziemi Zgorzeleckiej.
An especially interesting part of the evening and a complement to the exhibition opening will be a lecture by Piotr Rudzki, a native of Zgorzelec and a Wrocław resident by choice, who is a theatre scholar and assistant professor at the Department of Cultural Theory and Performing Arts of the University of Wrocław. On the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the establishment of public theatre in Poland and the 70th anniversary of Teatr Polski we Wrocławiu, he will deliver a paper entitled “Why Do We Need Theatre (Public Theatre) Today?”. The lecture will be accompanied by a screening of Tadeusz Różewicz’s performance “Caught – Reconstructions”, directed by Jerzy Grzegorzewski and recorded on 25 February 1994 in the burned-out Teatr Polski we Wrocławiu.
The theatre gathering on 7 November will also be special because that day we will attempt to revive Teatr Ziemi Zgorzeleckiej. That is why we extend a particularly warm invitation to anyone willing to devote their time and talent to reactivating the Zgorzelec stage.
Let us try—perhaps we will succeed.
Janusz Pawul