The theatres of Antiquity, Greek and Roman, constitute public buildings of the utmost importance in the history of Western culture and in universal cultural heritage. Many of these spaces are being used for their original function with or without only minor adaptations. If they are well preserved and/or restored, these performance buildings attract large audiences to representations of classical and contemporary plays, thereby serving the purpose for which they were built in the Ancient Age. These theatres bear witness to the existing relationship between architectural work, visual and acoustic experience, and dramatic art. Although the majority are located in the Mediterranean region, these structures were also built in the major cities of the ancient world in Europe, the Middle East, northern Africa, and beyond. This paper aims to summarise and critically review research published in the literature regarding their acoustic aspects, with particular emphasis on Roman theatres. These pieces of research emphasize the importance of the diffraction of sound in the tiers of the cavea and the good intelligibility for speech of the Greco-Roman theatre.

The article is devoted to the world’s first popularizers of the nō theatre outside Japan, with particular emphasis on the pioneering achievements of two Americans, Ernest Francisco Fenollosa (1853–1908) and Ezra Pou nd (1885–1972), as well as the next generation representing various European countries. The latter included, among others, William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), Paul Claudel (1868–1955), Jacques Copeau (1879–1949), Charles Dullin (1885–1949), Jean-Louis Barrault (1910–1994), Gabriel Cousin (1918–2010), Edward Gordon Craig ( 1872–1966), Benjamin Britten (1913–1976), Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) and Samuel Beckett (1906–1989), who, influenced by the fascination with the nō theatre, were the first to reform, in a more or less visible way, the traditional, realistic European theatre.

In this work, simulation techniques have been implemented to study the sound fields of a multi-configurable performance enclosure by creating computer acoustic 3D-models for each room configuration. The digital models have been tuned by means of an iterative fitting procedure that uses the reverberation times measured on site for unoccupied conditions with the orchestra shell on the stage. The initial virtual acoustic model is validated by comparing the other monaural and binaural acoustic parameters measured in the room in terms of their perception differential threshold. The procedure is applied to the Maestranza Theatre of Seville, built for the Universal Exhibition in 1992. The spatial distribution of the acoustic parameters in the audience area of the venue by measured parameters and simulation mappings enables the establishment of three zones of acoustic comfort, and are corroborated by the values of the Ando-Beranek function which provide a global quality coefficient of each zone.

The window is a recurring image in the imaginarium and the art of Tadeusz Kantor. Fixed in his memory at an early age, it resurfaced in the spectacle Wielopole, Wielopole (1980) as a plain object "of the reality of the lowest kind", and in the 'cricotage' A Very Short Lesson (1988) as a quasi stage prop charged with metaphysical meaning. The window motif is also a persistent feature of his graphic art. Most notably, it appears in the drawing Man and window (1971), a picture for the Dead Class (Window) from 1983, an autothematic cycle of paintings You cannot look inside through the window with impunity (1988-1990), and Kantor's last dated drawing of pigeons being watched through a window. Kantor's fascination with the window as an objet d'art can be explained by his philosophical aesthetics (especially the use of objects as markers of the 'spaces' of the stage action). This article analyzes the image of the window as a 'site' of special significance in Kantor's art (an object that encapsulates the antynomy of inside/outside, or a claustrophobic incarceration/a barrier to entry) in the context of Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht's theory of latency (i.e. the inability of throwing off the past, the suspension of time symbolized by artistic constructs of imprisonment).

In the summer of 1980, following the death of Vladimir Vysotsky, the Taganka Theatre in Moscow received more than 130 mourning telegrams. Their collection (although not all the items have survived) represents an invaluable source for the study of late Soviet culture. The descriptions of Vysotsky contained make it possible to reconstruct a certain collective portrait of the bard – this being one of the purposes of this article. The reasonableness of this task is justified by the fact that a number of the declarations sent testify to the articulation of emotions perceived by the authors as collective ones. The portrait we have created is a picture that perpetuates the personality, in which all the main features of the Russian cultural concept of “the Poet” are fully realized. It is also a portrait of a person who – according to the author of one of the telegrams – “lived ultimate states”, or – according to another – was permanently “standing on the edge.”

The article treats about a forgotten play Zaduszki (All Souls’ Day) by Stefan Grabiński, widely known as the author of fantastic literature and horror stories. The play Zaduszki consists of three parts: 1. Strzygoń. Klechda zaduszna; 2. W dzień zaduszny; 3. Sen Krysty. Misterium zaduszne. First of them is written in folk dialect. The second one, sometimes named „the longest one-act play ever staged in Polish theatre”, considers a problem of a fault and a punishment. The third one, similarly to the first one, presents folk beliefs in supernatural phenomena which take place on All Souls’ Day. Moreover, it partly resembles a mystery play. Although the trilogy got an unfavourable reception (it was shown only seven times in Juliusz Słowacki Theatre in Kraków), it may be considered as an ambitious attempt to match the heritage of Stanisław Wyspiański – according to Grabiński, the greatest authority in the field of theatre.

The article corresponds to the 400th death annniversary of two famous European writers – Cervantes and Shakespeare – celebrated all around the world. The author tells about their lifes and takes into consideration the possiblility of their meeting together in Vailladolid. Besides, the author emphasizes on the qualities that are in common for Shakespeare’s and Cervantes’ works – among others the universality (their readers were both educated as well as simple), the ability to create symbolic figures and the application of colloquial language.

Many performing artists in the interwar period in Poland assumed stage names, which were considered a tool of promoting one’s image, but also served other functions, such as the concealment of identity. Over two hundred such pseudonyms — together with the respective artists’ birth names — have been collected and analysed in the article. Approximately in the case of half of them was the original given name retained, and only the surname underwent a change. The comparison of the assumed names with the real ones shows that many names were shortened, and/or made to sound foreign or exotic. Minority surnames — Jewish/German, Russian, Ukrainian — were frequently made to sound Polish, while the Polish ones were foreignised (to make them look English, Italian, French) or vaguely exoticised.

This article tries to outline the history of the theater of the absurd in Poland by focusing on the metaphor of theatrum mundi (a device which is characteristic feature of this type of drama) and its use by Tymoteusz Karpowicz in his dramas Dziwny pasażer [A Strange Passenger], Charon od świtu do świtu [Charon from Dawn to Dawn], Kiedy ktoś zapuka [When Somebody Knocks], Człowiek z absolutnym węchem [The Man with an Absolute Sence of Smell], Przerwa w podróży [A Break in a Journey]. This metatheatrical device enables the dramatist to create a world of play-acting for its own sake, a world without God, with characters unable to look beyond the exigencies of their role and thus to express his disenchantment with the 20th century and his estrangement from the post-World War II reality. It also enables him to explore the mechanisms of theatrical performance and the role of language in the creation of reality.