Theatermachine

Magda Romanska is an associate professor in the department of performing arts at Emerson College and the author of Post-traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and Kantor.Kathleen Cioffi is a theater historian who specializes in Polish theater. She is the author of Alternative Theatre in Poland, 1954–1989.

• IntroductionKantor: A Short BiographyPart I: Kantor in TheoryTadeusz Kantor and ModernismTadeusz Kantor’s Objects: Materialism of the EncounterHuman/Object/Thing: Kantor’s Puppets and Bio-objectsCrushed People: Kantor and Trauma TheoryKantor and the Theatre of PostmemoryPostdramatic Tragedy: Notes on the Theatre of Tadeusz KantorKantor and the Posthuman StagePart II: Kantor, LocallyTransgression and Eschatology in the Work of Tadeusz KantorPossessed by the Traumatic Past: Postmemory and S. An-sky’s Dybbuk in Kantor’s Dead ClassTadeusz Kantor and Bruno SchulzKantor and Witkacy: Childish Games with DeathWitkacy’s and Gombrowicz’s Influence on the Theatre of Tadeusz KantorKantor’s and Grotowski’s Poor TheatreImagining a Future that Never Was: Tadeusz Kantor’s Symbiotic Jewish-Polish StageKantor and Slobodzianek: The Dead Class and Our ClassFrom Tadeusz Kantor’s Anatomy Lesson to the Autopsy in Polish Contemporary ArtPart III: Kantor, GloballyKantor and Early Twentieth Century European Avant-Garde DirectorsTadeusz Kantor and the German Bauhaus: From Technological to Metaphysical Utopia.Kantor and JapanOn the Reception of Tadeusz Kantor’s Work in GermanyKantor and the Contemporary European Avant-Garde: Marthaler, Perceval, and HermanisKantor and the Contemporary French Avant-GardeKantor, Pina Bausch, and Dance TheatreKantor and the American Avant-GardeContributors

“This groundbreaking collection of beautifully edited essays is impressive in both scope and depth. The book deftly interweaves Kantor’s Polish, Jewish, international, and theoretical roots, thus illuminating essential connections between each in thrilling new ways.”- Dassia Posner, author of The Director’s Prism: E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Russian Theatrical Avant-Garde“A unique collection, full of splendid writing and vivid insight, destined to become an essential resource on one of the twentieth century’s seminal experimental theater artists.”- Jonathan Kalb, Hunter College, the author of Great Lengths: Seven Works of Marathon Theater“An invaluable and much needed collection on the incomparable Kantor—his work, his life, his theatrical prescience. Kantor confronted the twentieth century in profound ways that changed the future of theater. This volume approaches his methods and means through twenty-first century lenses that Kantor’s own work might be said to have forecast—post-dramatic theory, new materialism, thing theory, and posthumanism. As such, Theatermachine expands our understanding not only of the theater artist but of theory and practice that would follow.”- Rebecca Schneider, Brown University, the author of Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment