ABSTRACT
As a Pole living in exile, Gombrowicz’s works were suspected by the communist government although his works were published and performed during periods of liberalization such as the Polish October era. In his article, Allen J. Kuharski’s interest is in how various cliques or factions within Polish theatrical and cultural life before 1989 sought to claim legitimacy through identification with the performance of his works. Extending to Polish theater artists producing Gombrowicz abroad (expatriots/dissidents), this essay includes early examples of international touring of Polish productions of Gombrowicz in the 1970s, and the complications around the ongoing performance of his works within Poland in the 1980s.
