Theatre
The Shoemakers
Szewcy
Opening lines
Sajetan
Nie będziemy gadać niepotrzebnych rzeczy.
We're not going to talk about unnecessary things.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from wolnelektury.pl
Synopsis
In a workshop, the master shoemaker Sajetan and his journeymen philosophise about work, society and the future, while the prosecutor Scurvy, whom they despise and who despises them, comes to lecture them. Little by little the idea of overthrowing the established order spreads through the workshop, and the play presents one revolution after another, each promising a new world, in a grotesque spectacle that unmasks social myths and utopias.
Context
Written between 1927 and 1934, after the author had given up the theatre, the play is polemically linked with La Comédie non divine, La Noce and Promethidion. It appeared only in 1948, in Kraków, from Czytelnik. Premiered on 12 October 1957 at the Teatr Wybrzeże in Sopot, in a staging by Zygmunt Hübner, it was performed only once before being withdrawn by the censors; its stage history has since followed the country's political crises.
Who it is for
Three acts subtitled “a scientific play with songs”, in a teeming language and difficult to read.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of its author's greatest dramas and as his most accomplished political play.
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