The directory «Plots»
Mrożek Slavomir
(b. 1930)
Slawomir Mrozek, author of many short stories, satiric writer, columnist and sketch artist, was born in 1930. His dramas present the simplest situations, human behaviours matching the scheme. He uncovers them in their comicality and their absurd. The most important plays he created before emigrating in 1963 to France and further to Mexico, are: THE POLICE, THE TURKEY, KAROL and THE GAME. His most famous play THE TANGO, a biological and psychological observation of creation of totalitarian mechanisms, the play, which made him internationally famous, was staged for the first time in 1965.
THE EMIGRANTS Mrozek's second most staged play was written abroad. This play is a study of two different forms of exclusion, juxtaposing idealistic patterns of thinking of a political emigrant with the sane sense of a simple emigrant, who left his country for money. In the 1980, in texts like THE AMBASSADOR or THE PORTRAIT, Mrozek continued his laboratory research on characters, concentrating more and more on their psychology and using them to present historical and political mechanisms.
In the 1990's Mrozek mainly wrote three plays: LOVE IN CRIMEA about the fall of the Russian empire, THE BEAUTIFUL SIGHT, the image of the Balkan War from the perspective of two Europeans carelessly spending their holiday at the seaside in one of the countries of the former Yugoslavia, and THE REVERENDS, a humorous analysis of religious hypocrisy. All three plays provide an image of the last decade of the 20th century, of war, disintegration of values, of a system based on genocide. Even though these are very important subjects, Mrozek does not present them directly but he twists them. The war becomes an annoyance to the tourists, the chaos of the last days of the totalitarianism is irresistibly funny, and the reverends become a sitcom in a twisted mirror. All this, because Mrozek recognises the contemporary reality through laughter.
Poland, 2000, Stanislav Lem, Galczyrsky, Scymborska, Wyspianski, Mrozek
