Zelwerowicz debuted as a director in 1913 with Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, which he staged at the Polish Theatre casting himself as Doctor Stockman. He followed this up at the same theatre with Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (1913), a famous production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (1914) featuring exquisitely choreographed group scenes (considered one of the best productions of the time at the Polish Theatre), and The Barber of Seville (1918) by Pierre Beaumarchais to name but three of his directing projects. He also staged plays from the Romantic and post-Romantic repertoires, including Part III of Adam Mickiewcz’s Forefathers’ Eve, the dramas of Słowacki, Wyspiański, and the comedies of Fredro, Shakespeare and Moliere.
Very early on, when still in Kraków, Zelwerowicz discovered his educational talent. Still a young actor, he was offered an opportunity to teach recitation and stage acting. In 1918 he began lecturing at the Warsaw Drama School and continued teaching at the Drama School of the Warsaw Conservatory from 1921. Two years later he became this school’s director and instituted a series of fundamental teaching reforms. He managed this school until 1929, and then again from 1931. In 1932 it was transformed into the State Institute of Theatre Art, of which Zelwerowicz remained director until 1936. After the war, in 1945, he opened the State Institute of Theatre Art in Łódź but managed this school for only one year. In 1947 he left for Warsaw, where he established the State Drama School (later renamed the State Higher School of Theatre). He remained the rector of this institution until 1949. His ties to the school did not cease then, as he remained its honorary rector and continued to teach there until his death. In 1955, the school was named after him. He was ‘an exceptional educator’, wrote Witold Sadowy. Sometimes unpleasant and biting, he was nevertheless loved by his students, for whom he cared, whom he loved like his own children and even supported financially. Yet he always did this in a way that did not offend anyone’(from Gazeta Wyborcza-Stoleczna 27.06.2005). In 1910 he travelled to Moscow to examine first hand the methods applied at the Moscow Art Theatre. He then conveyed the knowledge he gathered there to his students, yet he never taught the Stanislavsky Method developed at MXAT. He was always a greater proponent of artistic conventions in theatre rather than of pure realism or naturalism. Education remained a great passion for him throughout his lifetime, and his method of teaching assigned importance not only to developing skills, but also to the general education of actors, to their function in society and intelligence, which to his mind could be developed through broad theoretical education.