“Baroque Staring”

This chapter offers a reading of The Tempest in Polish theater through the lens of critical disability theory to highlight paradigm shifts in the representations of disability that have occurred in the onstage presentation of Caliban. By focusing critical attention on the performance practices in this respect it interrogates the ways of “staring” at disability in the contemporary Polish theater. The two performances of The Tempest staged in Yiddish in 1938 and 2020 showcase ablenationalism at operation in Central and Eastern Europe and allow evidence for the critical role that theater can play in opposing the “eugenic gaze.”