In my paper, I intend to present the working method of Krystian Lupa, the most important theatre artist in Poland. For years, this outstanding director and teacher has been keeping an intimate diary, which he published in the form of articles as well as books. My discussion of his work method as a director is based mainly on the book Utopia i jej mieszkancy (Utopia and Its Inhabitants). Lupa develops his reflections on the artistic process, revealing not only the ways of working on a performance but also his personal attitude to the creative process and actors. I would like to correlate this personal diary of the director’s work with the concepts of New Dramaturgy in Poland and the New Humanities developed at the Chair of Anthropology of Literature of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków (Poland). This comparison is interesting for two reasons. First of all, the New Polish Dramaturgy has its roots in Lupa’s artistic work yet it differs from his original methods. In contrast with the New Humanities, I would like to point out how the difference between academic theories and subjectivity starts to blur in such areas of humanist thought as affectivity and the category of experience.
Dr hab. Wojciech Baluch, prof., is employed at the Department of Performativity Studies, Jagiellonian University Kraków. He graduated in Theatre Studies from the Institute of Polish Studies at the Jagiellonian University. In 1988, he was awarded a six-month Fulbright scholarship at SUNY at Buffalo (USA). His doctoral thesis was concerned with the cognitive aspects of the process of interpretation. He was the initiator and co-organizer of a series of conferences for young scientists devoted to issues related to theatre and drama. His 2012 habilitation work was based on the book Po-między-nami. Słaby dyskurs w polskim dramacie współczesnym (Po-między-nami. Weak discourse in Polish contemporary drama). He is the editor of an anthology of Polish non-canonical drama Polska Dramatyczna 3. Antologia (Dramatic Poland 3. An Anthology, 2014) to which he wrote an introduction. Currently, he researches contemporary drama within the broad context of humanist theories. He is the head of an inter-university research group, which deals with various socio-artistic dimensions from the perspective of dramaturgically conceived dramaturgy.