Live Theatre, Dead Eye, the Dead in the Cellar and the Shoes of a Deadman: On Tadeusz Kantor’s “Dead Class” in Andrzej Wajda’s Film Recording

Dorota Sosnowska

Abstract

The article deals with the relationship between theatrical spectacle – Dead Class by Tadeusz Kantor – and its film recording by Andrzej Wajda. Starting from the thesis that this film rescued the spectacle and is an example of a master recording of a theatrical event, the author points out the definitions of theatre and film on which this conviction is based. Sosnowska in her analysis of Wajda’s state­ments on the recording of the Dead Class and his theatrical practice, points out the paradoxes resulting from understanding theatre as a “life performance”, ephemeral and in need of a rescue, and film as a dead and lasting medium. Following the points made by Rebecca Schneider, the author suggest that we look at the theatre in another manner – as a kind of an archive that uses other media, in order to survive in its performative way. Given such understanding, it turns out that the relation­ship between Kantor’s spectacle and Wajda’s film recording might be understood in a completely different way. The film not so much rescued the spectacle, but it turned it into a repetition of itself, becoming an essential element of the Dead Class.