A Joyful Mishmash: The First Polish Theatre Daily
Publishing a theatre daily is a bold endeavour because, to put it bluntly, such a paper must be filled with something every day. Especially when it is to be published without a single day’s break – on Sundays and public holidays as well. Such a challenge was met once in the history of Polish theatre writing: two enthusiasts decided to create something that theatre lovers could read literally every day. Apart from stage plays, what else filled the pages of the first (and probably only) theatre daily?
Without respite
In 1876, in Warsaw, at the time the capital of the Kingdom of Poland, Antrakt: Gazeta Teatralna (Entr’acte: A Theatre Magazine) began publication. The publisher, Aleksander Niewiarowski, described the work on the periodical as ‘arduous because it does not give a moment’s respite’. The first ever Polish theatre daily was heralded as a periodical ‘devoted to the fine arts, literature, criticism and social life in Warsaw and other great European cities that were foci of the intellectual, artistic and social movement’. The issues of Antrakt – like many periodicals published at the time – were numbered according to the old and new order, giving both Julian and Gregorian dates. Hence, the first issue of the daily appeared on 19 June/1 July 1876. The advertising brochure explained the undertaking as follows:
Given the growing desire to read periodicals and the Public’s consequent becoming accustomed to entertainment of the mind, and also in consideration of the complete lack of newspapers in Warsaw on public holidays, we have decided to publish our ‘Antrakt’ every day, not excluding Sundays and holidays.
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Aleksander Niewiarowski in a photograph taken by Jan Mieczkowski, 1860, photo: WikipediaAntrakt was to publish texts on the history of the theatre, literary criticism, information on the current repertoire, biographies of eminent theatre, ballet and opera artists, or excerpts from novels and plays, combining them with a ‘Chronicle of the most varied local news from the current life of Warsaw’. Contrary to appearances, however, the title was not just a simple reference to a theatrical who’s who. The magazine’s creators explained its meaning in a rather lofty way, invoking the insignificance of human life: ‘After all, between life and death, between thought and deed, between lust and surfeit, between smiles of joy and tears of despair and contortions of abomination – there is also only one entr’acte!’. Such an announcement sounds extremely ambitious, or even megalomaniacal, when confronted with a few pages of text… The magazine’s publisher, Aleksander Niewiarowski, was a novelist, columnist and editor associated with Warsaw Bohemianism. He produced Antrakt with the eminent photographer Jan Mieczkowski, the author of famous portraits of Mickiewicz, Modrzejewska and Moniuszko, who acted as editor in Antrakt and later also as publisher. It was in Mieczkowski’s photographic atelier at the corner of Miodowa and Senatorska Streets that the organisational headquarters of the magazine was located, while the editorial team worked at the Potocki Palace on Krakowskie Przedmieście. Subscription fees ranged from 35 kopecks (monthly) to four silver roubles (annually), with home delivery costing an additional five kopecks. The magazine was also sold in theatres and other city institutions.
The Chinese drink & smoke
‘Antrakt’, 1876, photo: National Digital Library PolonaMore than four hundred issues of that daily, digitised by the National Library, provide insight not only into how such a theoretically demanding journal was constructed but also into the theatrical, social and political life of the time. In the first issues, a large part of the content consisted of a column titled ‘Biographies of Outstanding Artists’, where biographies of such celebrities as Helena Modrzejewska or Romana Popiel were extensively presented. The Antrakt daily was also an attempt to go beyond the Polish and even European backyard to inform readers about theatrical (and not only theatrical) life from other, more distant areas of the globe. A small article on Chinese theatre (27 December 1876), for example, synthesised the reality of stage presentations there:
The audience always gathers in large numbers and sits under the open sky [...], in a tree, on a roof, or on a neighbouring wall. During the performance, the Chinese eat, drink, smoke and talk, never giving applause, nor whistling or hissing.
The magazine’s readers were also informed about non-artistic spectacles and events abroad: among them, the presentation in Brussels of a new parachute made of ‘gutta-percha-coated material’, the acquisition of a ‘rare boa constrictor of phenomenal size’ by the London Zoo and the formation in Frankfurt am Main of an ‘association against the custom of removing one’s hat from one’s head when greeting people in the street’.
Greedy readers
Advertisement for photographic studio of Jan Mieczkowski, ‘Antrakt’ co-publisher & co-editor, , ‘Antrakt’, 1876, photo: National Digital Library PolonaThe pages of Antrakt, a slim publication of only a few pages, were often a joyful mishmash of local news, world news and the authors’ reflections. News about the rise in paraffin prices, railway timetables or a man robbed while bathing in the Vistula River were juxtaposed with the announcement of Offenbach’s new opera. A report on a charity lottery with the main prize being a painting donated by Matejko himself was placed next to complaints about too many cake shops in the centre of Warsaw (the phenomenon was called the ‘cake-shop flood’). In a column with the telling title ‘Talking About Everything’, the author attempted to make a living by writing that there was nothing to write about, or, to be more precise, by complaining about the ‘sweltering and stagnant’ character of Warsaw life (issue published on 20 August 1876). ‘What should one choose from the life of a reader greedy for peppery novelties and sweet concepts that would manage to engage, amuse and perhaps only outrage?’ he asked rhetorically at the time. The issue of 10 September 1876, on the other hand, called for… returning spring:
The earth, in its rotation around the sun, must have gone thru [sic] some kind of alteration, because […] for years now we have not known what spring is like – our summers are sweltering and short, our autumns rarely sunny, and at the mere mention of winter, we shudder. […] Gentlemen of science, who measure the distance of the stars […] we ask you for one invention: return spring to us.
This peculiar informational and reflective jumble was interwoven with content referencing the magazine’s title, i.e. related to the theatre – apart from playbills, play announcements and reviews, there were excerpts from Z Pamiętników Prowincjonalnego Aktora (Diaries of a Provincial Actor) and Wspomnienia Dyrektora Teatru (Memoirs of a Theatre Director), correspondence from foreign theatrical shows, columns on the behind-the-scenes functioning of Warsaw’s theatrical institutions (in December 1876, there were complaints about high ticket prices, the ‘small lyrical repertoire’ or ‘musical crimes’ which, according to the author, were present on the opera stages of the time). There were also extensive posthumous memoirs about eminent personalities of Polish drama, directing and stage art – information was provided, for example, about the death of Aleksander Fredro (‘one of the brightest stars on the horizon of our literature has gone out’).
Women without hands
Antrakt can be regarded as a curiosity but also as an important document. As a daily magazine, it contained, by its very nature, a great deal of informative minutiae, details that would probably have been omitted from magazines published less frequently and presenting news and events of a higher order. Today, the pages of the diary are a valuable source of information about cultural and social life in the second half of the 19th century. Information about demonstrations of the skills of ‘women who have come from abroad without hands but perform various activities with their feet’, for example, reminds us of the then standardised and popular phenomenon of human circuses and freak shows, in which people with disabilities or dysfunctions and those from countries considered ‘exotic’ were positioned as attractive oddities to the delight of the public.
The arduous task of publishing Antrakt on a daily basis lasted barely eight months; its last issue appeared on 28 March 1877. After this time, the daily, purchased by the editor and publisher Felix Fryze, was renamed Kurjer Poranny i Antrakt (Morning Currier and Entr’acte), to be published under the abbreviated title Kurjer Poranny until the outbreak of the Second World War.
Written in Polish by Marcelina Obarska, 17 August 2023
Translated by Agnieszka Mistur
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