The Theatre Association „Gardzienice” – the Centre for Theatre Practices was founded as a theatre and a performance group by Włodzimierz Staniewski in a small village Gardzienice near Lublin (Poland) in 1977. Since then, it has become one of the best known examples of experimental theatre, linking musicality, music, performance and close relationship between the artists and the audience. The Theatre, apart from producing new performances, is also very active in the field of artistic education – in 1997 it started the Academy of Theatre Practices, where students from different humanistic fields can develop their animation and performance skills.
The Theatre Association „Gardzienice” – the Centre for Theatre Practices Collection
Provenance and cultural activities
The Theatre Association „Gardzienice” – the Centre for Theatre Practices was founded as a theatre and performance group by Włodzimierz Staniewski in small village Gardzienice near Lublin (Poland) in 1977. Since then, it has become one of the best known examples of experimental theatre, linking musicality, music, performance and close relationship between the artists and the audience. In the first period of its functioning, Gardzienice concentrated on the Middle Ages and folk tradition of Europe, i.e. in the "Evening spectacle" (1977) the group used Polish drama from Romanticism period, folk tales and songs, and Rabelais's book. Gardzienice’s most known performances include: “The Life of Archpriest Avvakum” (“Żywot Protopopa Awwakuma”, 1981) and “Metamorphoses, or The Golden Ass” (1997). Since the 1990s, the group has concentrated on the Ancient Greek culture as a source of symbols and tropes in European collective imagination. Moreover, it usied ethnographic and anthropological knowledge about different traditions, like the Carpathian region.
The Theatre, apart from regularly producing new performances, is also very active in the field of artistic education – in 1997 it started the Academy of Theatre Practices, where students from different humanistic fields can develop their animation and performance skills.
Documentation of the Centre for Theatre Practices Gardzienice is dispersed between different locations. Newer items, including Staniewski's correspondence, posters and performance documentation, is placed in the Alternative Theatre Archive at Zbigniew Raszewski Institute; most of the documents, photographs, sketches and brochures are in the Theatre’s headquarters in Lublin; some can be found in the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute.
Description of content
The collection of Gardzienice Theatre only recently started to be adequately organized and digitalized, after a part of the archive had been donated to the Zbigniew Raszewski Institute in 2016. The core of the collection consists of press clippings, posters, and photographs from the spectacles, as well as notes, sketches and other documents. Some of the video recordings from Gardzienice Theatre can be found in the National Film Archive - Audiovisual Institute of Poland. Thanks to intensive educational and research activities of Gardzienice, the Theatre's performances are analysed and described in the academic publications by scholars i.e. from the University of Warsaw. Since the group still functions on the Polish and international performance scene, the collection of Gardzienice Theatre is growing bigger every year and hopefully, in the future, it will be gathered and archived in one location. Nevertheless, today it is a testimony of the evolution of avant-garde and bold theatre performing, with the permanent message of richness and ambiguity of Polish folk traditions and European-Greek heritage, as well as modern usage of body, sound, voice and rhythm in the theatre performance.
Allain, Paul. 1995. "Coming Home: The New Ecology of The Gardzienice Theatre Association of Poland". Coming Home: The New Ecology of The Gardzienice Theatre Association of Poland.. n.d.
