Romanska Publishes Essay on Polish Playwright in LARB
Performing Arts Associate Professor Magda Romanska had her essay about the late Polish dramatist/writer/cartoonist Sławomir Mrożek published in the LA Review of Books blog.
The essay, “The Comic Frame of Sławomir Mrożek: Or, How to Tell if You Live in a Totalitarian Country,” examines Mrożek’s comic style, his approach to political realities, and where he fits in, philosophically and dramatically, within the canon of postwar Western playwrights.
Romanska writes:
Mrożek never saw himself as someone who actively advocated for political change; he didn’t see himself as a political playwright, not in the way these terms are used today. His works are void of the type of sacred pathos and self-righteous piety that permeates so much of today’s so-called political theatre. Mrożek’s political critique is done on the sly, casually, as if by accident; seemingly without purpose, motive, or even self-awareness. In the tradition of great jokers, the playwright constructs his authorial alter ego as someone who is too thoughtless to understand the mechanisms of power to be a real threat to it.
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