The Heart of the Polish Avant-Garde: The Story of the Cricot Theatre
In the 1920s and 1930s, cultural circles across Europe were looking to experiment with new forms of art, pushing boundaries and audience expectations to an extreme. In Poland too, new developments in visual art, film, literature and theatre were growing by the day.
And one of them – Kraków’s Cricot theatre – in fact became the longest functioning avant-garde theatre of the Interwar era…
The Polish avant-garde
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Józef Jarema, self portrait, 1945, private collection. Work from the 'Cricot Goes' exhibition at Cricoteka, Kraków, photo: courtesy of Aleksander Filipowicz
Artistic innovation was growing in Poland throughout the early 20th century, although this was mainly limited to small groups of highbrow artists. According to Włodzimierz Bolecki, ‘the 1920s avant-garde appealed to a mass society, but avant-garde literature was actually addressed to the few.’
By the 1930s, however, the situation was changing, with artists embracing pan-European developments, and searching for new forms:
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Only the idea of the avant-garde remained of the avant-garde program. Avant-gardism became an inspiration for new artistic and philosophical explorations in the realm of fine arts and new media, preceding phenomena that would appear in Polish art after 1956. The avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s revolutionized the understanding and function of semiotics in modernist art.
Author
Włodzimierz Bolecki, in Being Poland
Avant-garde art moved from the theoretical to the practical, with new films, shows and cultural developments. This included theatre. Incidentally, the birth of avant-garde theatre in Western Europe is said to have begun with Alfred Jarry’s 1896 play Ubu Roi (Ubu the King), which was ‘set in Poland, which is to say nowhere’ – written at a time when Poland was striving to regain independence.
The creation of Cricot
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Still from the broadcast 'Cricot: Avant-garde Visual Theater 1933-39', photo: https://audycjekulturalne.pl
With all this in mind, it’s easy to see how the idea for the Cricot Theatre developed in the 1930s. But the story of its creation also begins with Józef Jarema, a painter and playwright, who eventually led the Cricot team – made up of avant-garde writers and other young artists from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków.
During the Interwar period, the Academy had become a hotbed for new artistic ideas, including the colour-heavy Kapizm (Capism) – or Colourism. The name Kapizm came from the letters K.P., an abbreviation of Komitetu Paryskiego (Paris Committee), which was an aid group supporting students from Poland studying in France, established by Józef Pankiewicz at the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts in 1923. When the Kapizm trend developed, artists relied on colour to shape form, painting nature and landscapes simplistically, with different shades – avoiding symbolism, history, literature and ambiguity.
Jarema had been instrumental in the Kapists, and organised amateur theatre performances in Paris – and continued theatrical work when he returned to Poland in 1933. As theatre critic Jerzy Lau writes:
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[Jarema had] inexhaustible energy; a multi-talented painter, playwright, director, big, bulky, with a loud, booming bass voice.
As the backlash against old forms of art increased, adds Lau, ‘the thought of creating your own experimental scene, a scene fighting for a new understanding of theatrical art, was something natural.’
Jarema wanted to do something new; to create a trailblazing theatre much in the spirit of the innovative – and also Krakow-based – Zielony Balonik (Green Balloon) cabaret. Inspired by the visual spectacle of the circus, it was established before Poland regained independence.
Indeed, in his piece ‘Before the New Cricot Season’, Jarema explained that:
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Theatre is where theatrical art is created. A few artistically valuable performances are sufficient proof of theatrical existence.
Therefore, as Lau writes:
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Jarema’s proposal fell like a spark onto the proverbial tinder, and the first enthusiasts of the experimental scene went to work.
These included Maria Jarema, Zbigniew Pronaszko and Henryk Gotlib, although the theatre soon attracted more followers, too. The name of Jarema’s new theatre was likely settled between June and September 1933 – an anagram of the Polish ‘To cyrk’ (‘It’s a circus’).
Lau suggests that ‘the name [Cricot] sounded concise and intriguing’, whilst Professor Jacek Puget – a performer at the theatre – described it as follows:
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Some people think that ‘Cricot’ is a French word, French with Polish. Meanwhile, ‘Cricot’ means ‘BaBa’.
As Lau also notes, according to a poster for the theatre from the period, ‘Cricot’ also stood for the following artistic credo:
C – Kultura (Culture)
R – Ruch (Movement)
I – Inaczej (Different)
C – Komedia (Comedy)
O – Oko (Eye)
T – Teatr (Theatre)
‘Cricot’ was also a distortion of the French word ‘coquelicot’ (poppy).
Whatever the name stood for, the theatre’s ambitions were clear. From its cabaret, comedy and avant-garde roots, the Cricot Theatre was designed to emphasise artistic experimentation, planning the first shows at the headquarters of the Artists’ Union in the House Under the Cross – a social club for artists.
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The primitivism of technical means was rewarded with effective fragments of decorations and costumes.
Author
Zygmunt Leśnodorski in ‘Encyklopedia Teatru Polskiego’, trans. JB
The designs were planned to be surreal and hilarious. There would be specially composed music – by musicians such as Jan Ekier and Kazimierz Meyerhold. The stage design would be innovative and extravagant; the audience close to the actors.
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‘Cricot’ was a manifestation; it attracted, it engaged sympathisers, viewers, and those who contributed. ‘Cricot’ grabbed, because it was our organic need. It infected like laughter.
Author
Jacek Puget in ‘Teatr Pismo’, trans. JB
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Scene from the play Master Pathelin, Cricot Theater in Krakow, 1936, pictured: Jerzy Merunowicz & Stanisław Niedzialowski, photo: MHF / Forum
The novel idea of the theatre was certainly proving popular among avant-garde artists – but not everyone found it a success. When the first shows were staged in mid-1933, reviewers noted they contained pleasant surprises, but there were some hiccups too. On 24 November, 1933, the Nowy Dziennik (New Journal) ran a review about one of the first performances:
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The audience, quite small, sits on uncomfortable sofas with no back, one person smokes, others drink tea, listen indifferently to the announcer […] only painters feel good. After all, they are at home in the House of Artists.
And there was more discriminatory criticism too, notably from nationalist newspaper Głos Narodu (Voice of the Nation), which said it ‘bore the marks of a different race’.
As well as being saturated by the avant-garde, Lau notes the influence of folk art in the Cricot Theatre’s approach. Stanisław Marczak-Oborski adds that ‘the events had a unique atmosphere of carefree, almost social fun, which was fostered not only by the principle of improvisation, but also the conscious destruction of the barrier between the stage and the audience’ – but this must have proved too extreme for some audiences.
Yet, in December, the theatre took another step forward. With the involvement of the Kraków Group – who rejected traditional art to embrace more experimental painting, in Cubism, expressionism and surrealism (amongst others) – the theatre put on a world-premiere performance of Stanisław Witkiewicz’s 1922 play The Cuttlefish.
The Cuttlefish told the story of the contemporary struggle of the artist, as well as political misrule. Suitably, costumer designer Henryk Wiciński dressed for one character – the self-proclaimed dictator Hyrcan IV – as a Nazi, possibly as Hitler himself. Other costumes restricted actors’ movements, and involved body painting. Wiciński also used innovative costuming techniques for other plays, notes Karolina Czerska, dressing actors in costumes made of two parts for Adam Kaden’s Sen Kini (Kina’s Dream), to correspond to the play’s parallel plots and characters’ double lives.
However, Lau notes that the staging of The Cuttlefish over-exaggerated the madness of the text, rather than Witkacy’s more meticulous exploration of intellectual anxieties.
But, when Cricot 2 was founded in 1956, The Cuttlefish was performed again to mark its resurrection.
The Cricot stage moves forward
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Poster for 'Teatr Artystów Cricot' performance on Tuesday 15th January at 9:15pm of a modern interpretation of Wyspiański's play 'Liberation' (parts I & III), photo: National Library Polona
In 1934, the theatre completed its first tour to Warsaw, performing at a newly opened café on Królewska Street. According to Lau, it was received with some interest, although its shows could really only be ‘read’ by Kraków audiences.
Tadeusz Breza, writing in the Warsaw newspaper Kurier Poranny (Morning Courier) in 1934, questioned ‘what’ the theatre was ‘about’.
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Sometimes something flashes from our world, the rest, however, completely monstrous, or even just... insane.
The following year, its premises were moved to the House of Artists at 3 Łobzowska Street, in Kraków.
And, as the 1930s wore on, the Cricot Theatre grew in popularity even further – with its colourful array of artistic and literary talents, and regular performances of contemporary plays and new interpretations of Polish or international classics. There are also many anecdotes about Jarema’s quirky approach to publicity, which included storming into popular cafes, reproaching artists for sitting around drinking coffee while he and his team were creating a new theatre, and then demanding they attended shows – which, surprisingly, worked as a strategy.
Lau thinks 1938 was the theatre’s heyday, when it was becoming nationally famous, with the artists at the peak of their achievements.
It toured Warsaw again – and this time, Kurier Poranny said it had taken the city ‘by storm’, with audiences more accepting of the innovative approach. The artists involved were hopeful that the Cricot theatre could achieve more success in Poland’s capital – and so, in October, they began a permanent move to the city.
Once established in Warsaw, the repertoire of the theatre merely consisted of repeats of content from Kraków, although the bizarre and unusual nature of these performances still attracted many of the literary and cultural celebrities of the day. Lau notes that while the idea behind the Cricot Theatre was promoted in Warsaw, with Jarema giving lectures and working discussions with audiences, creative inspiration was drying up.
Jarema would repeatedly announce that the theatre was ‘cancelling the visual reality in which you open your eyes’ – but not enough people were watching. Its activity was finally halted by the war.
Cricot lives on
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'Tree of Consciousness' by Józef Jarema at the Cricot Theater in Krakow, 193, photo: www.audiovis.nac.gov.pl (NAC)
But World War II wasn’t the end of the Cricot Theatre. After the war, plans were made to continue Cricot in Kraków, Warsaw, Italy and France – and finally, in 1955, Cricot 2 was created by Tadeusz Kantor, Maria Jarema and Kazimierz Mikulski in Kraków. Cricot 2 would eventually play in Poland and abroad, with Kantor’s radical productions, particularly Dead Class, still famous today.
And the legacy of the first Cricot lived on – according to the Cricoteka living archive of Cricot 2, ‘the uniqueness of the Cricot theater was the result of the fusion of activities of many expressive personalities of the artistic life of that time.’
And, as Stanisław Marczak-Oborski, puts it, post-war Polish theatre was still undeniably influenced by the pre-war Cricot too:
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The influences of Cricot’s performances, though not always directly, were pronounced clearly in the post-war period not only in the numerous realizations of ‘Wyzwolenie’ [Liberation by Stanisław Wyspiański] and Witkacy, but also in theatres of such different artists as Kantor or Szajna, Dejmek or Hanuszkiewicz, and many others, besides in Skrzynecki’s [Piwnica pod Baranami] and in the phalanxes of various cabarets.
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