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'I place Boguslaw Schaeffer's genius firmly at the centre of the European cultural heritage which expressed avant-gardism during my lifetime.' Richard Demarco
This anthology of plays by Boguslaw Schaeffer, a Polish playwright, composer, musicologist and graphic designer, includes his most frequently performed works: Scenario for a Non-Existing, but Possible Instrumental Actor (1976), Quartet for Four Actors (1979), and Scenario for Three Actors (1987). The plays are examples of Instrumental Theatre. Like Schaeffer’s microtonal compositions, they are carefully structured and employ cyclical repetitions, and codes. Schaeffer’s most famous instrumental play, the Quartet for Four Actors, has been so successful that it has been staged by practically every Polish theatre. Scenario for a Non-Existing, but Possible Instrumental Actor, opened in 1976 and has since been staged over 1,500 times around the world. During its 40-year run, it has been critically acclaimed and has won many awards, including the 1995 Grand Prix at New York’s Theatre Festival. Winner of many prestigious international awards, Scenario for Three Actors, has been a permanent fixture in many Polish theatres since its premiere. Schaeffer is a universal artist, unafraid to explore a range of fields,forms, and subject matter, and his theatre, like his music, defies previous, established conventions and techniques, surprising its audiences with innovative and invigorating form and style.
Magda Romanska
Translated by
Magda Romanska is Professor of Theatre and Media at Emerson College, Boston, MA, Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, and a Principal Researcher at Harvard metaLAB, where she researches the relationship between art, science, and technology. She is the author of five critically acclaimed scholarly books, including The Post-traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and Kantor (2012); TheaterMachine: Tadeusz Kantor in Context (2020); Reader in Comedy: An Anthology of Theory and Criticism (2016); The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy, a leading and best-selling handbook of dramaturgy, and she has contributed a chapter to Postdramatic Theatre and Form (Methuen, 2019). As a playwright, she is a recipient of the MacDowell Fellowship, the Mass Council Artist Fellowship for Dramatic Writing, the Apothetae and Lark Theatre Playwriting Fellowship from the Time Warner Foundation, and PAHA Creative Arts Prize. She has taught at Harvard University, Yale School of Drama, and Cornell University.
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