Poland is celebrated internationally for its rich and varied performance traditions and theatre histories. This groundbreaking volume is the first in English to engage with these topics across an ambitious scope, incorporating Staropolska, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Enlightenment and Romanticism within its broad ambit. The book also discusses theatre cultures under socialism, the emergence of canonical practitioners and training methods, the development of dramaturgical forms and stage aesthetics and the political transformations attending the ends of the First and Second World Wars. Subjects of far-reaching transnational attention such as Jerzy Grotowski and Tadeusz Kantor are contextualised alongside theatre makers and practices that have gone largely unrecognized by international readers, while the participation of ethnic minorities in the production of national culture is given fresh attention. The essays in this collection theorise broad historical trends, movements, and case studies that extend the discursive limits of Polish national and cultural identity.

Tadeusz Kantor (1915-1990) was a Polish visual artist, writer, and theatre director, who can be placed among a select group of the twentieth century's most influential performance practitioners. The breadth and diversity of his artistic endeavours align Kantor with such varied figures as Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy), Marcel Duchamp, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Oskar Schlemmer, Antonin Artaud, Jackson Pollock, Jerzy Grotowski, Allan Kaprow, Peter Brook, Pina Bausch, and Robert Wilson. In significant ways, Kantor's work with the Cricot 2 company and his theories of theatre consistently challenged and expanded the boundaries of traditional and non-traditional theatre forms. Tadeusz Kantor's Memory: Other pasts, other futures -- published following Kantor's centenary year and the 60th anniversary of the founding of Cricot 2, as well as anniversaries of the group's key productions The Dead Class (1975), Wielopole, Wielopole (1980), and Let the Artists Die (1985) -- gathers international perspectives from across academia and the arts to offer a major critical reappraisal of Kantor's work. The book includes scholarly contributions by researchers from around the world, alongside reflections by leading collaborators and colleagues, and a selection of rarely seen images. Together, these materials offer an invaluable, contemporary insight into Kantor's theoretical and artistic practice and an unprecedented view of its global sphere of influence. Michal Kobialka is Professor of Theatre Arts at the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance, University of Minnesota. He has published over 75 articles, essays, and reviews in academic journals in the US and Europe. He is the author of A Journey Through Other Spaces: Essays and Manifestos, 1944-1990 (University of California Press, 1993), This Is My Body: Representational Practices in the Early Middle Ages (University of Michigan Press, 1999), and Further on, Nothing: Tadeusz Kantor's Theatre (University of Minnesota Press, 2009); editor of Of Borders and Thresholds: Theatre History, Practice, and Theory (University of Minnesota Press, 1999); and co-editor (with Barbara Hanawalt) of Medieval Practices of Space (University of Minnesota Press, 2000) as well as (with Rosemarie K. Bank) of Theatre/Performance Historiography: Time, Space, Matter (Palgrave, 2015). Natalia Zarzecka is Director of Cricoteka: The Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor, in Krakow, where she has led development of the centre's new building and museum space on the Vistula river. She has co-curated several Polish and international exhibitions, including within the Kantor Centenary programme at Cricoteka (2015) and 'An Impossible Journey: The Art and Theatre of Tadeusz Kantor' at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich, UK, within the Polska! Year (2009). She is co-editor of Italian and Polish editions of the Wielopole, Wielopole Dossier (Titivillus, 2006; Cricoteka, 2007) and Kantor Was Here (Black Dog Publishing, 2011), co-translator (with Silvia Parlagreco) of Podroz Tadeusza Kantora kompendium biograficzne (2002), and author of various texts on Tadeusz Kantor and Cricoteka. For more information about Polish Theatre Perspectives, and to view Open Access editions of this and other PTP titles, please visit www.ptp.press.

Tadeusz Kantor (1915-1990) was one of the twentieth century's most innovative visual artists, stage directors, and theoreticians. His theatre productions and manifestos challenged the conventions of creating art in post-World War II culture and expanded the boundaries of Dada, surrealist, Constructivist, and happening theatre forms. Kantor's most widely known productions-The Dead Class (1975), Wielopole, Wielopole (1980), Let the Artists Die (1985), and Today Is My Birthday (1990)-have had a profound impact on playwrights and artists who continue today to engage with his radical theatre. In Further on, Nothing, Michal Kobialka explores Kantor's theatre practice from the critical perspective of current debates about representation, memory, and history. He pursues the intriguing proposition that Kantor gave material form to a theatre practice that defined the very mode of postmodern operation and that many of its theoretical notions are still in circulation. According to Kobialka, Kantor's theatre still offers an answer to reality rather than a portrayal of a utopian alternative. Further on, Nothing includes new translations of Kantor's work, presented in conversation with Kobialka's own theoretical analyses, to show us a Kantor who continues to offer-and deliver on-the promise of the avant-garde