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The four volumes contain all 23 of Witkiewicz’s plays in English translation, including The Madman and the Nun, The Crazy Locomotive, The Water Hen, The Shoemaker, They, The Pragmatists, Tumor Brainiowicz, Gyubal Wahazar, The Anonymous Work, The Cuttlefish, The Beelzebub Sonata, as well as essays and introductions by translator Daniel Gerould.
Volume 1 contents:
- Preface
- Chronology
- Introduction
- W’s Theory of Theatre
- W’s Dramatic Universe
- Comedies of Family Life
- The Poor Boy
- Menagerie or The Elephant Escapades
- Courageous Princess [King and Thief]
- Princess Magdalena or The Importunate Prince
- Cockroaches
About the author
Stanis¿aw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy), a writer, playwright, poet, painter, photographer, philosopher and an art theoretician. Witkacy was a visionary ahead of his times, and yet a concretely pungent prankster, whose cutting-egde judgement and catastrophic prophesies allow new generations to rediscover his work time and again. One of the few Polish artists whose significance for world art history endures the test of time.
Jadwiga Kosicka was born and educated in Poland. She has translated numerous works from Polish which have appeared in many scholarly journals such as Theatre Quarterly, Theatre Three, Formations, The Polish Review, yale/theatre, New York Review of Books, Performing Arts Journal, SEEP (formerly called Soviet and East European Performance), among others. She has also translated and edited To Steal a March on God by Hanna Krall and A Dream by Felicja Kruszewska published by Routledge Harwood's Polish and East European Theatre Archive; and Jan Kott's autobiography, Still Alive (Yale University Press); and Zygmunt Hübner's Theater and Politics (Northwestern University Press), among others. With her late husband, Daniel Gerould—a professor of theatre at the Graduate Center CUNY (www.danielgerouldarchives.org)—she has done a number of translations of works by Stanis¿aw Ignacy Witkiewicz, and also co-authored A Life of Solitude, a biographical study of Stanis¿awa Przybyszewska, among others.
Summary
Volume 1 in a four-volume collection of Polish playwright Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz's plays.
