Diving back into the Arts and Culture of the 60s. Tonight it’s a play, originally written and first produced in 1958 by the Polish writer, dramatist, dissident and cartoonist Slawomir Mrozek. It became one of his most popular early works and was a driving force behind the Theatre of The Absurd which became so synonymous with 1960s counter-culture. It also set the stage for his most successful and adventuresome play, Tango which arrived in 1965 (and right on time).
In 1958, the comedy The Police marked Slawomir Mrożek’s debut as a playwright. The play paints a universal portrait of a totalitarian state not one anchored in a specific time or place. In order to survive, the state depends on the existence of some sort of opposition. The play’s absurdity comes from manipulating the notion of freedom, the appearance of which serves only to strengthen the police regime. It is hard not to recognize allusions to 1950s Poland in The Police, but the social mechanisms and the conduct of the characters caught up in them are just as comprehensible outside the Polish context.
Written in the style of Theatre of the Absurd, and listed in the Martin Esslin book of the same name, it was produced at the Phoenix Theatre in New York in 1961. This radio version was produced by the BBC around 1970, and this broadcast is from early 1971. A television production was aired in the United States later in 1971 by PBS. It was directed by Christopher Loscher in 2007 at the Battersea Arts Centre in London as part of the TimeOut Critics’ Choice season.
Dive in –
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