A Working Man’s Laughter. The Phenomenon of the Railman's Theatre in Kraków
It was admired by Andrzej Wajda, among others. ‘Here’s something you won’t see anywhere else’ he said. Founded after the Second World War, the 'Railman’s Theatre' in Kraków attracted a loyal working-class audience. It was older than Kraków's 'Teatr Ludowy' (Popular Theatre) and continued its operations up until the 1990s, being the last example of a working-class theatre institution in the capital of Małopolska.
Theatre After Work
[Poster] : [Inc.:] Saturday, February 15, 1947 at 6:30 p.m., Sunday, February 16, 1947 two performances at 15.30 and 18.30 'Son of 5 Fathers', a farce in 3 acts by Arnold and Ernest Bach [...], Teatr Kolejarza ZZK Kraków, 1947, photo: Polona National LibraryWajda expressed his approval for the activities of the Railman’s Theatre in his statements for a Polish Television documentary series on the topic of ’Theatre and Stage Art’, portraying this unique institution on the post-war cultural map of Krakow. The documentary, whose production can be dated more or less in the 1960s, includes excerpts from performances (e.g. Don Juan In Spite of Himself) as well as the reviews of the spectators. The latter make it possible to reconstruct not only the style in which the plays were performed, but also - and perhaps even more importantly - the relationship that the Railman’s Theatre had established with its audience. In the shots picturing the audience, we see lively reactions - laughter and applause during the performances - attesting to the close contact between the artists and the theatre-goers, as well as to the engaging nature of the plays presented. Post-show reactions captured by the filmmakers paint a consistent picture of the Railman Theatre’s audience as a loyal 'fan organisation': ‘I attend this theatre quite frequently. They put on a cheerful show and you can see that the amateur actors manage somehow’, ’Well I'm here for every play’, ‘We don’t really attend other theatres, only this one’, ‘We come here a lot because we live close by and we are workers - this theatre suits us because they put on vaudevilles and you can have a laugh. A person relaxes in the theatre’. All of these statements lead to the conclusion that the theatre was very much needed by the working class at that time and place, fulfilling a cultural and community-forming role, as well as offering an opportunity to maintain a certain mental hygiene after hard physical work. ‘Only the working people gather here to admire and have a moment of, you know, respite after hard day’s work’, states another audience member 'caught' by the filmmakers.
Engineers Build the Theatre
Tenement house at 7 Bocheńska Street in Kraków. Built in 1908 according to the design of Beniamin Torbe, photo: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 InternationalIt was a summer evening in 1945 when the Railman's Theatre put on a performance on the stage at Bocheńska Street for the first time - several days behind schedule. On the 18 of August, the working-class brethren of Krakow were shown Franciszek Dominik's Fatherland, a folk play in three scenes published in 1922, directed by Provincial National Council member Eugeniusz Białek-Załucki. (Interestingly, Białek-Załucki put his work at the amateur theatre company before his managerial post at the General Theatre in Kraków, which he took up the year the Railway Theatre was founded). The premiere performance was well received by the guests invited from the theatre and literary community. The building, devastated by the war, already had electricity installed, but the audience had to... bring the chairs and benches on their own. It is therefore easy to imagine that the beginnings of the institution must have been linked to the enormous enthusiasm of its founders, who despite the lack of suitable conditions and infrastructure, strove to create stage art and present it in front of an audience. It is also possible to look at their work through the prism of the notion of collectivity - so popular today, but which had also materialized successfully in earlier decades. The lack of subsidies and the amateur nature of the whole endeavour forced the team to work on their own, and thus to collaborate on almost every element of the theatrical machine (including its technical and administrative facilities). All adaptations - both the artistic and administrative aspects - were the result of the work of theatrical amateurs. ‘Captivated by the magic of the stage, they devoted their spare moments to rehearsals and performances,’ Cyganik wrote in the Gazeta Krakowska. The ensemble included pensioners, but also people working professionally, such as the administrative manager of the Railway Hospital, an employee of Biprostal (Bureau of Projects & Studies in Metallurgy), engineers, locksmiths... Their commitment (rehearsals were held up to five times a week!) and constant development of the artistic ensemble allowed some of its members to later enter the professional theatre scene.
Lola on Stage
Placard: Sunday, 13 January 1946 at 3 p.m. Nativity play in 3 acts, in 5 scenes [...], Railman’s Theatre ZZK Kraków, 1946, photo: Polona National LibraryComedies, farces, vaudevilles, musical plays ... The Railman's Theatre mainly performed vivid works with comedic overtones and a sentimental potential that allowed for the use of expressive acting tools. These were also largely texts depicting local urban folklore - vaudevilles by authors such as Stefan Turski (an actor and director involved in popularising theatre in the provinces) and the satirist Konstanty Krumłowski. The last author became famous for his vaudeville play Queen of the Suburbs, the stagings of which were extremely popular in pre-war Krakow and which naturally also became a highlight of the Railman Theatre's repertoire. The repertoire also included plays such as Turski's Krowoderski Zuchy (The Lads) (a four-act 'comedy-farce with songs'), Krumlowski's Vows of Dębnica and the vaudeville Lola from Ludwinów (also by Turski), based on a true story. Other authors included some of the most important authors and creators of Polish drama, such as Wojciech Bogusławski, Gabriela Zapolska, Aleksander Fredro, Franciszek Zabłocki and Michał Bałucki. However, foreign authors were not shunned: the Railman Theatre's audiences could count on stagings of plays by Nikolai Gogol or Justin Huntley MacCarthy. In 1971, the Theatre on Bocheńska street staged the drama Three Women and I by Anna Świrszczyńska, an author who has been quite intensively rediscovered over the past few years, and who is also being read from a feminist perspective.
Railman’s Culture House in Cracow, photo: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 PolandOperating at the Kraków branch of the Railmen's Trade Union (ZZK), the theatre had its headquarters in a tenement house at 7 Bocheńska Street in Kazimierz until 1986. The building, designed by Ferdinand Liebing and Joshua Ignacy Oberlender, was built before the First World War, in 1908, and was intended to house a Jewish theatre. The permanent stage for Jewish artists from Poland and abroad, which also had its own ensemble, had its heyday from the 1920s onwards. The Railman’s Theatre was closed down by the fire brigade on the grounds that it did not meet safety requirements. Since 2010, a commemorative plaque with a laudatory quotation from Andrzej Wajda has adorned the building. Despite appeals from the community and the audience (‘This theatre must exist!’ thundered Marek and Bogdan Zabiegaj in the Gazeta Krakowska daily, emphasising the need to renovate the ruined premises of the Railman’s Theatre), the institution did not get a new permanent venue and had to settle for guest performances. The next venue for the Theatre's shows (which had become increasingly rare) was the Railman’s Culture House at St. Philips Street 5.
Millions of Viewers
In the year of the theatre's 40th anniversary, the Voice of Nowa Huta weekly published a note summarising the results achieved over these four decades: 127 premieres presented a total of over six thousand times for two million spectators.
Working in theatre is their additional occupation outside of their professional work. However, it brings satisfaction and joy from the fact that one can ’share oneself with someone else’ -evoke a smile, emotion, sometimes tears, obtaining the highest gratification for an actor - the acceptance of the audience. [...] The workers' theatre, referred to as boulevard theatre, tries to preserve the folklore of Krakow and its suburbs, customs and rituals.
- Bogdan Zabiegaj wrote in the Voice of Nowa Huta.
In one of the Theatre's anniversary publications, the chief director of the Railway District in Krakow noted that the activities of the Theatre were ’a symbol of the combination of the difficult profession of a railwayman with the domain of culture, represented and practised with such admirable enthusiasm by the members of the company’, and that its activities were ‘a valuable contribution to the dissemination of culture among railwaymen, as well as a light to brighten their private lives’.
Removing the Intimidating Emblem
[Flyer]: ‘Kraków Days’, Saturday 14 June 1947 at 7 pm, Sunday 15 June 1947 at 7 pm ’Vows of Dębnica’ vaudeville in 4 acts by Konstant. Krumlowski and the ‘Hobby-Horse’ with a procession [...],Railman’s Theatre ZZK Kraków, 1947, photo: Biblioteka Narodowa PolonThere was another important aspect of the Railman Theatre's activities. It can be defined as a function of the domain of theatre pedagogy. In an article entitled The Phenomenon of the Amateur Stage published in Gazeta Krakowska in 1970, Henryk Cyganik wrote that the theatre on Bocheńska 'through its authenticity, folklore, entertainment and simplicity of theatrical symbol teaches the theatrically “inexperienced” audience to understand the conventions of the professional stage'. Perhaps such statements can be interpreted as a 'patronizing' gesture towards both the theatre itself and its audience (labelling it unserious, a cottage industry, amateurish in the pejorative sense), but undoubtedly the very accessibility of the performances presented there meant that the Railman's Theatre was willingly visited by a faithful audience, who were not discouraged by the intimidating emblem of 'high art' that accompanies theatre. The accessible repertoire facilitated the dissemination of the theatrical medium. Perhaps for some audiences the Railman's Theatre was a first step in the context of their theatrical interests?
Without Patronising
The tradition of the Polish theatre movement among railwaymen and railway institutions dates back to the inter-war period, as exemplified by the Nowy Sącz-based Worker’s Theatre founded by railway workers in 1922. Performing arts ensembles were one of the forms of educational work of the trade unions, and Krakow's Railman’s Theatre was an important part of the history of post-war amateur cultural life in Malopolska (nota bene, it was the theatres that were the first among the local artistic institutions to re-assume their activities after 1945; the Słowacki Theatre, for example, was putting on shows already a week after the city's liberation). Obviously, the educational mission of workers' theatres was inscribed in the narrative of the People's Republic of Poland's authorities and described in a language that was typical of socialist propaganda. Publications on the occasion of the Theatre's successive anniversaries referred, among other things, to 'the shaping of material values through the creative efforts of the nation' and to 'the development of culture accompanying productive development and technical progress'. But the Railman’s Theatre also fulfilled the cultural sphere's duties towards the working class that were older than the People's Republic of Poland. As a summary of its role, but also of the very idea of a folk theatre, let us take another of Andrzej Wajda's quotations from the afore-mentioned reportage on the Railman's Theatre from the 1960s:
In Poland there is probably a greater need than we suspect for folk theatres. Not because the name itself or the programme itself, which treats the audience condescendingly [...], but a theatre that springs forth from some kind of necessity. In short, it seems to me that there are too few entertainment theatres, operetta theatres, and too many theatres that rather harbour the ambitions of the creators than those of the audience.
Translated from Polish by Michał Niedzielski
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