Solska the Experimentrix
It is not without significance that Boston inaugurated the activity of the Stefan Żeromski Theatre Studio in Żoliborz – an experimental stage built in a boiler room and run by Irena Solska. The stage had previously operated under the name of Żeromski Theatre in Żoliborz and functioned as a 'mobile stage', renting various Warsaw halls for particular projects. Solska, an outstanding actress and interpreter – referred to by Żeleński as ’an aegis of symbolism, modernism, decadence’, and by Iwaszkiewicz as ’a symbol of Young Poland’ – managed one of the poorest Warsaw theatres of the time, and at the same time one of the most unconventional stages in the capital. Initially rehearsing in the rooms of a former tsarist chancellery, plays were later also performed in a kindergarten room and in the open air (in a park, and even – during the Sea Festival – on the coast of Gdynia).
The performances were accompanied by a minimalist setting – they were usually played without scenery or props, in the spirit of the avant-garde (and due to modest resources) dispensing with the traditional ramp, backstage or curtain. ’All decorative grandeur is unnecessary in performances that enchant with the power of thought’, Solska claimed, most likely putting on the proverbial brave face despite the unpleasantness related to the poverty of the institution. In May 1933, the theatre moved to a Żoliborz boiler house on Suzina Street, achieving organisational stability. However, the financial situation of Solska's theatre was not stable. The innovative ventures did not usually attract many male and female spectators, despite low ticket prices. Affordable prices were one of the gestures supporting the democratisation of theatre (the vision of a huge, class–transcending audience was a typical avant-garde dream; suffice it to mention the Syrkus’s dream about a folk theatre with a capacity of up to ten thousand spectators at the end of On the Simultaneous Theatre).
Despite Solska's immense commitment to the development of this risky avant-garde project, the material support of her theatre melted away with the successive premieres. The venue, described by Leon Schiller as ‘the most interesting in Warsaw from an architectural point of view’ and manifesting ‘the most forward–looking art’, fell victim to its own avant-garde aspirations misunderstood by those in charge of granting subsidies and grants. The nail in the coffin of Solska's theatre was a performance based on Jan Leszczyński's drama § 245 KK (Paragraph 245 of the Penal Code, T.N.), which dealt with the social problem of venereal disease. The performance – as we read in Lidia Kuchtówna's biography of Irena Solska – ’was received with distaste’. The gradual withdrawal of financial support following the subsequent premieres unfortunately led to the closure of Solska's theatre.
‘It was precisely the women of the 1920s and 1930s who represented the most progressive current in Polish theatre,’ wrote Jagoda Hernik Spalińska in her text Socfeminizm, which presents the socially engaged playwriting of the interwar period. In addition to Maria Strońska, who opened the stage at the Railwayman's House in 1929, and Marcelina Grabowska, author of the drama Justice, about a woman serving a sentence for having an abortion, Hernik Spalińska also mentioned Irena Solska and the staging of Boston, which, thanks to her involvement, was transferred from the Jung Theater to the Żeromski Theatre, becoming an icon of the first theatrical avant-garde.