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“One of the most famous theater masterpieces of the 20th century in which Tadeusz Kantor (1915-1990) talks about dying that starts in your childhood. He makes use of mannequin-corpses on stage. Those figures would become a symbol of his Theater of the Dead. Kantor started to think about staging the performance in the summer 1972, in Bielkowo near Osieki, after he glimpsed through the window into an empty classroom with rows of school benches. Kantor then realized the power of memory. Even over emptiness and death. He imagined the pupils, now long dead. The performance featured dotards sitting on the benches, resembling mannequins or the dead. They were meant to symbolize victims of 20th century wars, including Holocaust. They walked round the benches to the rhythm of a Francoise waltz, dragging mannequins that represented their younger selves. The performance was staged almost two and a half thousand times worldwide. It was recorded live three times. Andrzej Wajda filmed it as early as 1976, starring all the actors from the original casts with a few exceptions. The movie was shot mainly in Krzysztofory cellars, where the Dead Class first opened, and on other locations in Cracow.“ (source: ) Tadeusz Kantor: “The seaside. A small village. One street. Small, poor one-story houses. And one, possibly the poorest of them all: a school building. It was summer. The school was empty and deserted. There was only one classroom in it. It was possible to peek into it through dirty, dust covered windows placed very low. They gave the impression that the school had sunk into the ground. My face was glued to the window. For a long time, I peeked into the dark interior of my muddled memory.“ ┍━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Dramatis personae: Woman with mechanical cradle, Gamboline (Maria Stangret-Kantor) Somnabulistic whore, Iza (Zofia Kalińska) Old man with bicycle, Joseph Brainowicz (Andrzej Wełmiński) Woman behind window, Balantine Fermor (Maria Górecka) Stranger, Teacher, Professor Alfred Green (Bogdan Grzybowicz) Old man in the WC, Tumor Brainowicz (Mira Rychlicka) Exhibitionist, Maurice Brainowicz (Zbigniew Bednarczyk) Old podophiliac, King Patakulo, Prince Tengah (Roman Siwulak) Ordinary old man (Wojciech Łodyński) Absent old man in the front row (Lila Krasicka) Absent old man in the back row (Jan Książek) Flunker - obituary notice delivery man (Zbigniew Gostomski) Pedel in past tense (Krzysztof Miklaszewski) Charwoman, Death (Stanisław Rychlicki) Director, scenography, author: Tadeusz Kantor .:. Camera: Edward Kłosiński, Janusz Kaliciński Directed by Andrzej Wajda ┍━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Sources: ▗ “Próby Zapisu“Jan Kłossowicz (Dialog nr 2, 1977) ▗ ▗Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz “Tumor Brainiowicz“ translated by Daniel Gerould (Kantor uses this text as a springboard, many references to Witkiewicz's play throughout. e.g. Witkiewicz's protagonist Tumor Brainiowicz is Kantor's Old man in the WC while Iza a Somnabulistic Whore. Do not take it is as a given. Many performances were staged differently). ▗“Further on, nothing. T♥duesz K♥ntor's Thetre“ Michał Kobiałka (University Of Minnesota Press, 2009) ▗Bernadette Bost ┕━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Kantor once said about “Dead Class“, a tip for pedants: “It would be unwise for a bibliophile to try to find the missing fragments for a full 'knowledge' about the subject of an art story.“ But I did it anyway. T throws his eloquent tirades from above.
