Silences

With the play Dead class, produced in 1975, Tadeusz Kantor inaugurated the “Theatrum mortis” a new type of theater crystallizing his experimentation. A group of elderly people are confronted with a class of dead children that are none other than themselves, materialized in wax figures. A scenic strongly magnifying questions about memory and death: “The existence of creatures made in the image of man in an almost sacrilegious manner, nearly clandestine, fruit of the heretical, stamped by the obscure, nocturnal, seditious side of human behavior.” A sculpture integrated within the scenography, the bench which seats both the actors and the figurines alternatively, is a vital component of the work, perfectly illustrating the bonds Kantor established between fine arts and theater.

Children at their desk, for the play the Dead Class, 1989
Mixed technique; 144 x 132 x 260 cm
The Cricoteka Center for Documentation of Tadeusz Kantor, Cracow

Wielepole, Poland, 1915 – Cracow, 1990