The Radio Potential of Tadeusz Różewicz’s Theater of (In)consistency

Abstract

In this article, I look at the features of Tadeusz Różewicz’s dramatic plays that are particularly attractive to radio theater, not coincidentally known as the theater of the imagination. Initially, I focus on the notion of the theater of inconsistency as understood by the artist himself, who spoke on this subject in conversations with Konstanty Puzyna and Kazimierz Braun, co-author of The Languages of Theater. One can get the impression that Różewicz did not necessarily and not always write with the idea of staging his plays in the theater; that he was closer to the concept of non-stage, literary art intended for reading, based on internal action and the power of the word (focusing
on its communicativeness and utility); and that he valued the fragmentariness and openness that described the “dispersed” reality and the “unconsolidated” identity of the characters. The themes raised by the interlocutors, focusing on the features of the theater of inconsistency and referring to specific plays and their stage productions, make it possible to conclude that some shortcomings and limitations of stage theater, suggested by Różewicz, could be at least partially compensated by radio theater. The next part of my article is devoted to the concurrency of the vision created in Różewicz’s plays (and “added” by him in conversations with theater experts) with that realized by the creators of the radio with the use of aural means of expression.