Moonrise Press is pleased to present the first of four volumes of Collected Plays by Kazimierz Braun, containing his plays for one actress and one actor, in a bilingual, Polish and English edition and a large format (8.5 by 11, 364 pages), hardcover and paperback.
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Collected Plays Volume 1, Plays for One Actor, is the first volume of dramas by Kazimierz Braun in a bilingual, Polish-English edition. It contains two dramas for an actress and five for an actor. "Emigrant Queen" tells the story of the fate and journey of the great actress Helena Modrzejewska (Modjeska), a star of Polish and American stages in the second half of the 19th century. "Hollywood Means Sacred Forest" depicts the attempts of a Polish actress to make a career in America in the 1980’s. The texts about Tadeusz Kościuszko, Cyprian Kamil Norwid, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, and Saint Maximilian Kolbe are biographical dramas about these great Poles who—each in their own field—had a huge impact on the course of Polish history, its literature and culture, as well as Polish spirituality; they also made their mark on history in its broadest sense.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kazimierz Braun is director, writer, and scholar. He studied Polish literature and directing. He obtained his doctorate at the University of Poznań and his habilitation at the University of Wrocław; he also obtained a habilitation in directing at the Drama School in Warsaw. He holds the title of full professor both in Poland and the United States. He directed over 150 theater productions in Poland, the USA, Canada, Ireland, Germany and other countries. He was the Artistic Director and General Director of the Theater J. Osterwa in Lublin (1967-1974) and the Contemporary Theater in Wrocław (1975-1984). He taught at universities in Poland and the United States, including the University of Wrocław, the Drama School Kraków-Wrocław, University of California, City University of New York, New York University, University at Buffalo. He is the author of over 70 books on the history and practice of theater, as well as novels, poetry and dramas, published in several languages. His dramas were produced in Poland, the USA, Canada, and Ireland. He is also the author of translations from English, French and Italian into Polish and from Polish and French into English. He has received a number of artistic, literary, and scholarly awards, including awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, Fulbright Foundation, Turzański Foundation, the Japanese Foundation and the London Prize for Literature.
TABLE OF CONTENTS IN POLISH AND ENGLISH
SPIS TREŚCI
Moje przygody w teatrze jednego aktora——3
Sztuki dla aktorki ——————————— 15
Królowa Emigrantka ————————— 17
Hollywood znaczy święty las —————— 57
Sztuki dla aktora ——————————— 75
Kościuszko. Naczelnik ———————— 77
Powrót Norwida ——————————— 97
Sienkiewicz. Ku niepodległości ————— 115
Mistrz Paderewski ————————— 135
Cela Ojca Maksymiliana ——————— 151
Nota o autorze ———————————— 357
CONTENTS
My Adventures With Plays For One Actor — 177
Plays For An Actress —————————— 187
Emigrant Queen ——————————— 189
Hollywood Means The Sacred Forest ——— 237
Plays For An Actor——————————— 255
Kościuszko. The Commander——————— 257
Norwid Returns———————————— 277
Sienkiewicz. Towards Independence ———— 295
Maestro Paderewski ———————— ——315
Father Maximilian’s Cell ———————— 333
Note About The Author ————————— 357
INTRODUCTION
MY ADVENTURES WITH PLAYS FOR ONE ACTOR
by Kazimierz Braun
In the summer of 1982, I taught directing and Polish theater history at the City University of New York, Graduate Center. It was a special summer course for theater professors from all over the United States—a group of about 30 intelligent professionals; we worked very well together. I lived on the campus of Columbia University, got up at dawn, before it was hot, and wrote an adaptation of Albert Camus’ The Plague with the window open, looking east toward Poland; the sun was coming from that direction. The Plague was to be a response of my Teatr Współczesny (The Contemporary Theatre) in Wrocław to the martial law imposed in Poland six months earlier. It was to be an artistic diagnosis of what was happening in a country subjected to a brutal, totalitarian regime. This regime functioned like the plague, a universal decease.
After a light breakfast, I walked to downtown Manhattan, almost an hour—the Columbia campus lies at 116th Street, I had to walk down on Broadway until I reached 42nd Street, where City University is located. I had classes from ten in the morning until two in the afternoon. And then I spent my time exploring the city, including museums and galleries, talking to people, and attending meetings with larger groups, either invited by Americans, or organized for me by Polish friends. In the evenings, I went to theaters. It was a very intense time.
After one of the meetings, a young woman approached me and introduced herself—yes, I recognized her, she was my former student from the Theater School in Wrocław. She wanted to have a longer conversation with someone from Poland, from the theater. She invited me to visit her. She lived in a Polish neighborhood, Greenpoint. We talked for a long time, or rather she was the only one who spoke, throwing out words quickly, in long streams, as if without any punctuation marks at all—which I tried to convey later in the transcript of her monologue, both in Polish and, when writing it again, in English. There was some kind of an abyssal longing for the country, Poland, in her, and at the same time, an unquenchable desire to make a career here, in America. She kept drinking the Russian Smirnoff with small sips, as if in anger, as if wanting to pour out all the clear liquid from the one-liter bottle. She spoke in waves of sadness and resignation, excitement and tension.
The next day at dawn, exceptionally, I didn’t sit down to write my adaptation of The Plague, but I started to put down—freshly, so as not to forget—what I heard from my former student, then an actress, and then... No... I’m not going to tell this here. I told this in my monodrama Hollywood Means the Sacred Forest, which I wrote then, very quickly, within a few days, based on her confessions and my own New York experiences.
When I returned to Poland in the autumn, I first set in motion the production process of my already completed adaptation of The Plague. I managed to get permission to start the rehearsals from the authorities and censors—necessary at that time to include any play into the repertoire. I was arguing that I only want to tell the story of the plague that had indeed, several years earlier, attacked Wrocław. The troubles with the production began later: a ban of the show, issued after a dress rehearsal by a committee made up of censors, administration bureaucrats and the Communist Party (PZPR) officials; my desperate efforts to get the permission to perform The Plague; obtaining permission for two (! ) performances, at the price of some, ultimately minor, censorship’s cuts; running the production of The Plague with the incredible support of the Wrocław audiences; later, eventually, obtaining permission for further performances; difficulties in showing the play abroad— in response to coming one by one invitations from Germany, Holland, Yugoslavia, Greece, England, and America; the ending of this little epopee with a catastrophe—I was fired from my theater in July 1984, precisely because of that Plague, but also for a dozen or so other reasons—my oppositional activities. This is a separate story—these incidents occurred later.
But before the opening of The Plague, which took place on May 6, 1983, the Contemporary Theatre worked somehow normally—in a completely abnormal situation of the country.
At that time, we had at our disposal, apart from the large, basic, proscenium stage, also a small stage called “Rekwizytornia” (“The prop room”), where we had already performed various shows for around a hundred spectators. For example, one of the parts of Tadeusz Różewicz’s Birth Rate was situated there. I thought that the monodrama I wrote in New York would be very suitable for “Rekwizytornia”. I had an excellent actress in my ensemble, Halina Rasiakówna, who, I thought, would be great as the heroine of the text. I invited Halina for a talk. I gave her the text. She liked it.
Not without difficulty, I obtained the permission of the authorities to insert a new play into the repertoire. I concealed my authorship under the pen-name “Jerzy Bolmin”, which was very useful in negotiations with them. I took the directing myself. Halina learned the long text very quickly—oh, what a talented actress she was. It was a monodrama, but I introduced a man, a partner, who listens to my heroine’s story, yet, without uttering a single word. This role was also performed by an excellent actor, Andrzej Mrozek. The premiere on March 5, 1983, was very successful. Rasiakówna was really great. We performed Hollywood for a long time in “Rekwizytornia”, and Halina performed this production also many times herself, as a one-woman show, on tours. Among others, she won the main acting award at the Festival of One-Actor Theatres in Toruń in 1983.
The text of my monodrama was published by the Wrocław’s “Odra” monthly, which was very kind to me at the time, and shortly afterwards it appeared in my book Excess of Theatre. These are all good, bright memories for me connected with Hollywood Means Holy Forest.
There are, unfortunately, dark ones as well. Because not much later, when I had already left the country in search of work that I lost in Poland, and I was already working in America, I began hearing that this text was produced in several theaters—and no one had even asked my permission. Then I learned that my text was being prepared for Television Theater in Warsaw. And it was broadcast! Against my will—for in Poland I had been participating in the boycott of the state television since 1982, and I maintained the boycott even when my colleagues decided to end it. I did not want to have anything to do with the regime’s television. Yet, my play was shown on the screens! My protests were of no avail.
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However, the success of this monodrama somehow opened up this kind of writing for me. When I met Helena Modrzejewska in California, in her home called “Arden”—from the Arden Forest in Shakespeare’s As You Like It in which she wondered so many times as Rosalind... I have recounted this extraordinary meeting many times. It is also included in the Afterword to The Émigré Queen in this volume.
I was in “Arden” twice. Indeed, I had the impression that I saw her, that I talked with her... These visits resulted in my writing a monodrama.
Helena Modrzejewska, or as she is called in America, “Modjeska”, says goodbye to her house in 1906. She had to sell it when she retired from the stage and the performance fees stopped coming in.
The first to take an interest in my text was Jan Maciejowski from Kraków. He made an adaptation of it, transforming the monodrama into a play for two characters, introducing Modjeska’s partner. He directed a production under the title Mrs. Helena (Pani Helena) at the Narodowy Stary Teatr, the National Old Theater in Kraków, with a great performance by Anna Polony in the role of Modjeska. Her excellent partner was Jacek Romanowski. Barbara Zawada designed the space and scets in an extremely interesting way—the play was performed in the spacious Helena Modrzejewsa Hall in the Old Theatre building. The theater invited me to the premiere, which took place on May 5, 1989. I found myself then in my country for the first time, after four years of exile, that was imposed on me by the authorities. Intense emotions.
Not long after I returned to America, I received an unexpected call from Jerzy Warmiński, an excellent director and head of Teatr Ateneum (Atheneum Theater) in Warsaw: He found out about the Kraków’s production and brought my text from Kraków—Warmiński was known for his constant search of repertoire novelties. “The two of us read your text”—the two of us—that is he, and Aleksandra Śląska, a great star, his wife—”And we love it.”
Aleksandra wanted to perform Modjeska, and he would take on directing. They wanted to use my original form of a monodrama—a lone star—performing a lone star. They are planning the performance on the small stage of the Atheneum Theater called Stage 61, and they are asking for my permission.
I replied to Mr. Warmiński with the utmost gratitude—of course I agreed, and I was extremely happy. This production would be a great thing for me. Janusz Warminski was always very friendly to me, and I worked with Aleksandra Śląska several times at the Television Theater in Warsaw, directing her as Lia in Norwid’s Behind the Wings, the Poet’s Lady of the Heart in my biographical script about Norwid, I write an artist’s diary, and the Lady in Jerzy Szaniawski’s Two Theaters.
Aleksandra Śląska immediately began to memorize the text. Rehearsals began. The premiere was scheduled for October 1989, and I was to receive an invitation to the premiere. But on September 18, 1989, Aleksandra Slaska passed away. The whole project collapsed.
Her taking up the work on my text, and the success of the Kraków’s premiere, encouraged me to direct The Émigré Queen myself. I made an adaptation of my monodrama, introducing, in addition to Helena, the star, Helena the youngster, and a Man, who would perform all the men who appear in the text.
At the time, I had good relations with Irish theater, after— the very well-received— performances of my Wrocław Contemporary Theater at the Dublin International Theater Festival. We showed there Tadeusz Różewicz’s Birth Rate in 1980 and Anna Livia, based on James Joyce, adapted by Maciej Słomczyński in 1982. The 1982 festival was dedicated specifically to Joyce on the centennial of his birth. Then, I directed in Dublin, had a workshop for directors, and participated in subsequent festivals, as a guest invited by the organizers.
Based on the good memory of my work in Ireland, I arranged for the production of my text about Modjeska in Dublin. I directed a production entitled Immigrant Queen at the Project Arts Center Theatre. For the role of Modjeska, I brought Teresa Sawicka from Wrocław, known to Irish audiences for her excellent performance in the role of Anna Livia—including the delivery of Molly Bloom’s last monologue in English. Teresa literally won Dublin’s the audiences over. And now she performed brilliantly—in English—the great role of Modjeska. She received excellent reviews.
I will state right away that a similar take on my text—an adaptation of it into three characters—Modjeska the mature, Modjeska the young, and The Man (playing several male roles), was used by Janina Katelbach (1927-2014, stage name: Nina Polan), at the Polish Theater Institute in New York, which she headed. I suggested such an adaptation to her, and she liked it, but did it in her own way, consulting loyally the text with me. Working with director Józef Kutrzeba, she prepared a play entitled Helena, The Queen of Emigrants. Bilingual herself, she did two, twin versions of this play and performed it either in Polish or in English. The premiere took place in 1994, and then Nina Polan performed it for years, among others, in 1997, at the famous Off-Broadway theater, LaMama, day after day—the first day in Polish and the second day in English. She later developed a monodrama version, which she also performed in both languages.
But, after all, I wrote this text about Modjeska as a monodrama. That’s how Aleksandra Slaska wanted to play it. It didn’t come to that. The time has come for such a take.
Working in America, I read an interview with Maria Nowotarska in 1992, in some Polish-American magazine, in which she recalled very gently our Kraków acquaintance and work in Norwid’s Behind the Scenes at the J. Słowacki Theater in 1970. In that production, she performed brilliantly the main double role of the great lady, Lia, in the contemporary (for the author) part of the play and the priestess Eginea in the ancient part of it. Her partner was one of the greatest actors of the time, Leszek Herdegen, performing, respectively, Omegitt and Tyrteus in the two parts of the play. They were surrounded by the excellent, large, friendly ensemble of the Teatr Słowackiego in Kraków. I have always recalled this work on a difficult Norwid text as a wonderful, extremely important, theatrical experience.
Maria Nowotarska also remembered our work together very well and fondly. I learned from that interview that Maria had been at that time living in Toronto, Canada, and was trying to organize Polish theater there. And I was living, with my wife Zofia and daughter Justyna (our two older children, Monika and Grzegorz, remained in Poland) near Buffalo, New York, and working at the university there. Canada’s Toronto and America’s Buffalo are separated only by Lake Ontario. It’s about 60 miles by air, and about 100 miles by the highway.
We met with Maria. We thought that since a fate had thrown both of us from Poland somehow close to each other, we should do something together—we should do theater together.
I offered my text about Modjeska to Maria Nowotarska. She found in it a good acting material for herself. And in the fate of Modjeska, the Polish actress-emigrant, she was looking for answers to questions about her own emigrant’s fate. She undertook the laborious work of learning the long text. Jan Kopczewski worked with her as a director. The result was a production entitled Helena. A Story of Modrzejewska. It was very successful. Alone on stage, Maria extremely evocatively populated the space around herself with a variety of characters that—as I imagined it—Helena Modjeska invites to a farewell party at her “Arden.”
After a run in Toronto, Maria performed the show dozens of times with great success in Canada, the United States, Poland, including, at the Teatr Słowackiego centennial jubilee (1993), a moving return to her former stage, and then in numerous tours—in London, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Vienna and many other cities in America and Europe.
A film entitled The Modjeska Canyon was also based on my monodrama. It was directed for the Polish Television by Stefan Szlachtycz in 1996. The action was situated in Modjeska’s home in California, where, as I believed, I had once met her.
These were two monodramas about two actresses. One, who fulfilled her dream, becoming the greatest American star of her generation. The other, a century later, who did not materialize her dream—the dream of a great career in Hollywood. These were stories about every artist who strives to transcend his/her limitations, weaknesses, doubts—and chases, only sometimes successfully, the ideal. This quest for the ideal, for perfection, and in the case of an actor, for a great career, is deeply encoded in each of us.
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I wrote my next monodrama also about somebody who aspired to an ideal—the ideal of holiness. This was Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941)—Saint Maximilian. He reached that ideal.
I heard about this figure as a child. The news about Father Maximilian, the Franciscan friar who sacrificed his life in a German concentration camp, Auschwitz, for another human being, had already spread in waves in Poland during the war; it continued to circulate and intrigued; it filled with fear and admiration. However, he, that friar, remained for me a distant ideal.
I had a close encounter with Father Maximilian when I was traveling in Japan in November 1982. In the convent built by him in Nagasaki I met Brother Sergius, one of his disciples and collaborators. He generously gave me his time, told me many stories, and showed me around the Japanese Niepokalanów—Mugenzai no sono, a large complex built there in the 1930’s by Father Maximilian, a Polish missionary. There is a church, the monastery, the school, and other buildings. On the nearby hillside with the beautiful name Hiko, which means “Hill of echoes”, there is a chapel with a statue of the Immaculate Mother of God, whom Father Maximilian worshipped all his life.
The canonization of St. Maximilian by Pope John Paul II, on October 10, 1982, was a ray of light for all Poles in the dark time of martial law. The stimulus that guided me to a more extensive study of the life and work of St. Maximilian was an exchange of letters with Father Dr. Peter Cuber, Polish Franciscan, who encouraged me to attempt to write a drama about the saint, in view of the upcoming seventieth anniversary of his martyrdom in 2011.
As a result of Fr. Peter’s encouragement and following it up an invitation from the Kraków Province of the Conventual Franciscan Friars, I found myself at the monastery in Harmęże near Oświęcim, and thus near the German concentration camp, Auschwitz. For a month I participated in the monastic life. I had many interesting and inspiring conversations and visited many places where the saint left his footprints, above all, the Auschwitz camp, where I visited his death cell three times. I was in Kraków, Niepokalanów, and elsewhere. I received a lot of information, many books. All this allowed me to write three plays about St. Maximilian—Maximilianus, Father Maximilian’s Cell, and My Son, Maximilian. The epilogue of each is The Passion of Saint Maximilian, which can also function as a stand-alone drama.
Well, first I wrote an epic Maximilianus, with dozens of characters, set in many places and times. But then, I wrote as it were, its condensed version, narrowed down to a monodrama, which is a material for just one actor, Father Maximilian’s Cell. In turn, this monodrama could be expanded. The reworked text reached the shape of The Book of St. Maximilian.
But here, in this edition, I return to the monodrama, which has been focused even more on the figure of the saint himself. Father Maximilian’s Cell is a text for reading, for meditation on his life and death, on his work and prayer, as well as for acting—in the form of a monodrama; it can also serve, however, as has happened already many times, as material for various stage adaptations.
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Cyprian Norwid (1821-1883) was the great, long-lasting adventure of my life: reading, reciting his poems, researching and writing about his works, directing them in theaters and on television, as well as writing biographical plays about him.
Among my plays about Norwid, first there was a screenplay recounting his life and works, titled with a quote from his Vade-mecum: I am writing an artist’s diary... I directed it at the Television Theater in 1970, with an excellent cast: Norwid was peformed by Leszek Herdegen, the lady of his heart, Aleksandra Śląska. I again wrote a biographical play about Norwid, being very strict about using only his words, whenever possible. I wanted to direct it also at the Television Theatre, but at that time (in the 1990s) Polish Television was no longer interested in Norwid. Therefore, I published this text in a separate book, titled The story of Norwid woven of his own words. This play was, however, very difficult to stage because of the large cast and numerous changes of scenery. So, I reworked this material again and gave it the shape of a modest monodrama, Norwid’s Return, which I published in the book My Norwid Theatre, and directed in a slightly expanded form with the help of Tomasz Żak in his Teatr Nie Teraz (“A Not Now Theatre”) in Tarnów in 2016.
Then this text met an extraordinary, wonderful adventure. The excellent actor, Marek Probosz, a Pole who had lived and worked in the United States for years, read it and liked it. Based on Norwid’s Return, he prepared a one-man production which he performed at the World Festival of One-Actor in New York in 2022 (with the participation of 93 actors and actresses from around the world) and won one of the main awards of this festival. Crazy success! And also, a great popularization of Norwid.
Here I will present Norwid’s Return in this form—a text for one actor.
I served Norwid for many years. I want to serve him once again by publishing here Norwid’s Return, and thus encouraging other directors and actors to turn to him, to draw from him. For it is a source of wisdom, a treasury of Polish language, a volcano of imagination, and a delicate breath of beauty, which, as he himself wrote: “...beauty should delight to work—work, that one may be resurrected.”
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One of the first readings of a boy who barely learned to syllabify was the Trilogy. All of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s (1846—1916) books stood in a place of honor in our home library, next to the white volumes of Norwid on one side and the series of Miracles of Poland on the other. I pulled them all out of the shelve one by one.
I have two childhood memories connected with Sienkiewicz.
The first one: I was once running from Milechowska Mountain, through a steeply forest alley towards home, and there, on a rocky stretch, I tripped, fell down, and badly cut both my knees. I struggled to get home. My father—who had undergone basic medical training in the Boy-scouts, had the “Paramedic” badge, and was our “house doctor”—took care of washing and dressing my wounds. These were painful operations. And then father put me in the bed, sat by my side and started to read the scene from Sienkiewicz’s The Deluge where the evil Kukliński tortures the good Andrzej Kmicic in some barn, and Andrzej only clenches his teeth and endures it bravely. This is how Sienkiewicz taught the boy to be brave.
The second memory is related to my mother. Myself and my siblings’ education during the war consisted of regular classes in various subjects taught at home by our parents, grandmother, and aunts or cousins who stayed with us from time to time. The education included also loud reading books of the basic canon of national classics. Mom, alternating with Grandma, read aloud to us while we did various chores, such as shelling peas or peeling mushrooms, in the evening, as well as during the afternoon times of recreation.
One afternoon—I remember that it was bright, because the evenings readings went by candlelight, by kerosene or carbide lamp—Mother read The Deluge. My father was then in a German prison in Kielce.
That time Mom got to the scene when Wołodyjowski is telling his companions about the Polish hussars—winged riders charge at the Battle of Warsaw. That famous scene when the winged, armored riders, cut across the whole Swedish army and crush it. Mom reads this story and gradually her voice breaks, tears appear on her cheeks, and then they fall, like peas, flowing in streams, but she doesn’t stop reading. And she continues to read, in a breaking voice, through increasingly thick tears, about this great Polish victory, about the flying hussars. And I feel, I know, that my Mother is reading this in the middle of a war, she is reading it against the Germans, with faith in the Polish victory, and I am flying with her, and I am flying with those winged hussars, and the enemies are crushed, overpowered, destroyed. And Mother, weeping, does not stop reading. This is how Sienkiewicz taught the boy never lose hope.
Thus, returning to Sienkiewicz was for me always like a search for a sure ground of Polishness and tradition, faith and patriotism, courage and steadfastness, in the depths of current artistic trends, in the swamps of political events, in the chaos of philosophical, literary and theatrical discussions.
When the centenary of Sienkiewicz’s death in 2016 dawned—he, who with his works led millions of Polish readers towards independence, yet, did not live to see the hour of independence, dying in the middle of the First World War in 1916—I decided to serve him. I wrote a monodrama about his leading Poles towards independence. I titled it: Sienkiewicz. Towards independence. It’s worth going back to Sienkiewicz especially in time when our independence is again threatened—I write these word in 2022.
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My accounts with Tadeusz Kościuszko (1746—1817) were completely different. In my childhood I was taught to respect him, I was warned about him (I’ll explain this in a moment), and I also touched one of the extremely painful shreds of his fate.
From our wartime forest home (I’m talking about WW II) on Mount Milechowska in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains, it was about 4 kilometers (about 2.5 miles), after crossing the Wierna River, to the nearest town, Małogoszcz. And there, on the large, square marketplace, my father showed me the place where the statue of Tadeusz Kościuszko stood. Right after the September 1939 campaign, the Germans demolished that monument. Only the base of a thick column remained. A scar in the ground.
My Father explained to me why the Germans demolished Koścuszko’s monument and why it stood here. The Germans toppled Kościuszko because he was a symbol of the fight for Polish independence. As I was to learn later on, they tore down Polish monuments everywhere in the territories they occupied. I was soon to see in Kraków the places where the great monuments of Kościuszko, Mickiewicz, and the Grunwald Monument stood, all torn down by Germans.
“But why Kościuszko in Małogoszcz?”
“Because”, my Father explained to me, “this is where he arrived retreating from the field of the lost battle of Szczekociny. He came here, to Małogoszcz. From Szczekociny to Małogoszcz it is about 30 kilometers (less than 20 miles) by shortcut, through the forests. Here he stopped for a few days and was gathering the defeated troops. The doctors were dressing the wounded. The chaplains buried the dying from wounds. The severely wounded scythe-bearer Bartosz Głowacki, hero of Kościuszko’s first battle, the victorious Battle of Racławice, was brought here. Soon later Głowacki died of his wounds.
“What were those battles?” I asked.
“It was an uprising. Kościuszko’s Uprising. The uprising of 1794. The uprising of Poland against Russia and Prussia, who had partitioned Polish territory in 1793. Kosciuszko was at the head of this uprising as the Commander of the armed forces, the Leader of the whole nation with dictatorial powers. He was fighting for Poland’s freedom.”
So, from that time on, I knew that Kosciuszko was the Commander. My Father continued his lecture to the boy.
“After a few days of reorganizing his troops in Małogoszcz, Kościuszko went from Małogoszcz through a ford on the Wierna river—then called the Łośna, but since Stefan Żeromski in his novel Wierna River called it Wierna (Faithfull) it was called that new name—and on through the village of Milechowy to Bolmin, from there to Chęciny, from there to Kielce. That’s all our neighborhood.
From Kielce Kościuszko went to Warsaw. And from Warsaw Kościuszko went to Maciejowice. There, in a great battle, he suffered another defeat, was taken prisoner by the Russians, and his uprising collapsed. The failure of his uprising in 1794, resulted in the third partition of Poland in 1795, and the loss of independence for 123 years, until Poland was resurrected in 1918.”
I knew these dates.
So, already in the boy’s mind this knowledge about Kościuszko remained imprinted while looking at the broken base of his monument: he stopped in Małogoszcz between one lost battle, the one in Szczekociny, and another lost battle, at Maciejowice. Thus, he was like the personification of Poland’s misfortune, the loss of independence. And yet, he fought for Poland’s freedom.
After returning home from Małogoszcz, my Mother, learning that my Father had told me about Kościuszko, said with her crystal clarity of thought, deep faith, and accurate choice of words:
“You must also know that Kościuszko was a Jacobin and a godless man. I’ll explain what it means when we get to the end of the eighteenth century.” Mother taught Polish language and literature, as well as history in our wartime home school.
And so—I learned more about Kościuszko. About his military studies in Poland and France, about his worldview shaped by Freemasonry and Enlightenment philosophers. And that’s how it stayed for me: a commanding officer of lost battles, a godless man, a dictator—the Commander of a lost uprising. And yet—a freedom fighter. Then I was learning more about other, lost Polish uprisings. They were like heavy milestones in the home study of history: 1830, 1846, 1863. But, finally, independence in 1918. And then—again a lost uprising—the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.
Shortly afterwards, in the winter of 1945, Kościuszko’s name became famous again, when it turned out that the Polish army under Soviet command, which was entering Poland from the east to carry out another occupation of our country, was called the Kościuszko Army. His name was thus defiled. National tradition manipulated. It was better to forget him, I thought.
I run across Kościuszko again in America: his home and monument in Philadelphia, his great monuments in Washington, in Chicago, at the Military Academy at West Point, an important Polish-American organization, the Kościuszko Foundation. In America I also found out that when Ignacy Paderewski was forming a Polish army in America during World War I, he called it the Kościuszko Army.
Kościuszko went down well in America: as a professional, skillful military engineer—an expert in fortifications, as a brave commander, as a benefactor of slaves, whom he freed by his testamentary bequest in the estate which was granted to him here, and in the estate of his friend Thomas Jefferson. (I am not going into the details of that will of his—that is how it is generally remembered). The same Jefferson, one of the founders of the United States, initially Vice President and then President, described Kościuszko as “the purest son of liberty.” It all gave food for thought.
And when my friend, an actor—and he was an excellent actor, a Pole, but bilingual and well established in America—began to persuade me to write a monodrama about Kościuszko for him, I first resisted for a long time, then I conducted very solid historical studies on the life, fate, decisions, and actions of Kościuszko, and then I wrote a monodrama about him.
It is published in this volume for the first time. I have just finished it. It is available to my friend and any actor who would like to confront himself with the great and complex figure of Tadeusz Kościuszko.
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I came into contact with Ignacy Paderewski for the first time... I mean, I came into contact with the memory of Paderewski. But it was a very personal and emotional contact.
I remember standing with my parents in Cracow under the German occupation—it was in 1943, in front of a big black spot in the middle of a large square—the Grunwald Monument had previously stood there. The Germans tore it down in 1939. And there again, as not so long before—when my father and I stood by the broken column of the Kosciuszko monument in Małogoszcz, which I have already written about—I received a small history lesson from my father. This time he spoke as a witness to an event in which he himself participated. This made this story so personal. For he was there, along with his family, at the unveiling of this monument in 1910. He was six years old at the time. But he remembered.
“The Grunwald Monument”, father said, “was established by Ignacy Paderewski, a great pianist and composer, statesman and patriot, on the five-hundredth anniversary of the memorable Polish victory over the Teutonic Knights in 1410.”
Father heard Paderewski’s speech to the countless crowds at the unveiling of the Grunwald Monument. Later, his father, Karol, leader of the Falcon Association in Tarnów, also spoke at the monument. And then Grandfather Karol led a troop of Falcons in a parade that honored the Grunwald celebrations.
“Paderewski made a hugely significant contribution to Poland’s regaining her independence in 1918. First, he collected funds in Europe and America for food for starving Poles, as the fronts of World War I swept through our lands, devastating the country. Then Paderewski mobilized the Polish community in America around the idea of resurrecting Poland. He then persuaded the American government to aid Poland’s quest for independence. With the support of America, Great Britain and France, he returned to the country and became President of the Council of Ministers of Poland in 1919. He began to quickly put the economy, legislation, education and all Polish life in order. He represented Poland at the Versailles Peace Conference, where he fought tirelessly for Polish borders. He began his efforts to resurrect Poland precisely with the founding of this monument. We will talk more about all this”—concluded my father.
I came into contact with the memory of Paderewski again in America. In Buffalo, a city near which I lived while working at the State University of New York, there is a Paderewski Street. In Washington, D.C., at Arlington Military Cemetery, in the mausoleum of the USS Main Mast Memorial, I saw Paderewski’s coffin deposited there by decision of President Roosevelt—with the honors due to a head of state—on July 5, 1941. After Poland regained its independence in 1989, the ashes of the great Pole were brought to the country in 1992 and buried in the crypt of the Warsaw Cathedral.
From my American home it was not far to Niagara Falls, and from there it was only a step—over a bridge across the Niagara River—to the Canadian town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, where was the training camp of the Kosciuszko Army, which Paderewski created in 1917.
Several visits there inspired me to study his life and then write about it. First there were articles and papers, and then there was a drama, Paderewski’s Children, which I directed myself at my university with a large cast of dozens of young actors; using, in one production, two black box theaters, in which the two acts of the play were performed. In one theater: the first part, happening in the military camp in Niagara-on-the-Lake in 1918, and in the second theater: the second part, situated in a villa in Kraków in 1941. I then wrote a drama—this time with a small cast—Paderewski Returns. This was followed by the novel The Return of Paderewski. During one of my visits to the country, I went to Kąśna, to the estate and manor house that Paderewski purchased and lived there from 1897 to 1903. So, I accumulated a lot of knowledge about Paderewski and touched places marked by his presence. With my writing I attempted to serve the memory of this Great Pole.
I thought I could give him another service: to write a monodrama, bringing him close to the modern audience. Because it is worth returning to Paderewski for strength and inspiration when thinking about Poland.
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I have recounted—briefly—my work in the “One Actor’s Theater”, as they appeared, among many other works, in my writings. But in this volume, I arrange these monodramas in two sections—the texts for the actress and the texts for the actor. Within these sections, the texts are given in the order in which their characters appeared in the history.
First, in the section of texts for an actress, there is the story of Helena Modjeska (1840-1909), and then the story of a Polish actress who would like to follow in Modjeska’s footsteps in America in the 1980s.
The section offered to actors includes texts dedicated to Tadeusz Kościuszko (1746-1817), Cyprian Norwid (1821-1883), Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916), Ignacy Paderewski (1860-1941), and St. Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941).
These texts were first written precisely as monodramas—for a single actress or actor. This is also how they were performed. (With the exception of the newest of them—about Kosciuszko and Paderewski, which did not have their premieres yet). The majority of these plays were also adapted in various ways. I myself performed such procedures. Here they appear in their original form, but they too are open to any kind of adaptation.
For the record: Polish and English texts sometimes differ slightly—addressed to different readers and spectators with different cultural backgrounds.
In the Preface to The Ring of a Great Dame Cyprian Norwid insisted that the dramatic text should be a high-quality literature and, at the same time, it should provide a material ready for the theater. So, simply put, that it should be both a good read and a well-written theatrical script. This is, of course, the case with a great number of dramas.
First instinctively and then consciously following Norwid’s recommendation, this is how I tried to create all my dramatic texts, including those for one actress or one actor.
Kazimierz Braun
