Witkiewicz and the theatre of death

Roger Howard

pp. 42-62

in: Brian Docherty (ed), Twentieth-century European drama, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1994

Abstract

Such a critical reception for a first play frequently guarantees the playwright instant box-office success and automatic elevation into the canon. But the production of Tumor Brainiowicz at the Slowacki Theatre in Krakow in June 1921 was no breakthrough for Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy, 1885–1939), playwright, painter, critic, aesthetician, novelist, philosopher and writer on drugs, whom his American translator and biographer, Daniel Gerould, has described as "one of the most amazing artistic geniuses and personalities of the modern period".²