Ifigenia i inne dramaty

Antonina Grzegorzewska is one of Poland’s most compelling contemporary dramatists. She studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and makes ceramic art to this day. Yet the stage has always called her, given that her father, Jerzy Grzegorzewski, was a brilliant theatre director. Grzegorzewska’s work is a response to the misfortunes of the world, and also a conversation with the great artists. Her painting diploma project focused on Bernard-Marie Koltes, a French author and theatre director who died of AIDS. As a playwright, she debuted with the monologue He, part of Jerzy Grzegorzewski’s final play, He: The Other Return of Odysseus. Staged at the National Theatre in Warsaw (2005), it was the artist’s painful reckoning with himself. Grzegorzewska has built her dramatic style taking a page from Heiner Müller’s work. Like the postdramatic and catastrophic author of Hamletmachine (1977), Grzegorzewska depicts wars, upheavals and revolutions through a single protagonist’s experience, often a woman. She frequently draws from mythology and history, but not as a pretext. Her major themes are violence, suffering and salvaging goodness as inextricable parts of human life. Hers is a poetic language, full of metaphors and allusions to the outstanding movements of the twentiethcentury avant-garde. She is no stranger to irony and a sense of humour, but remains a step removed from the cruel reality portrayed on stage. She is a theatre visionary, shaping the scenography of future plays. Grzegorzewska’s plays are infused with emotion, yet meticulously constructed. Her expressive monologues have a musicality that makes their performance quite demanding. Some important Polish directors (including Anna Augustynowicz) have taken an interest in Grzegorzewska’s work, and the author herself has staged the titular work from Iphigenia and Other Dramas. She has also written a memoir about her father, JG: Dreams (2007), as well as A Letter to Heiner Müller (2008). She publishes prose and op-ed pieces in literary and theatre journals. She has made her home in Andalusia, Spain, settling down in its culture and history. In 2020, she wrote and published a drama, La Pasionaria, whose protagonist is the tragic figure of Dolores Ibárruri, a political activist from the Spanish Civil War era.