Rzeczy teatralne. Tymon Terlecki w londyńskim studiu Radia Wolna Europa

• Authors: Violetta Wejs-Milewska

Title variants

EN

Things Theatrical. Tymon Terlecki in the London Studio of Radio Free Europe

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The article deals with a hitherto little known area of Tymon Terlecki’s activity, i.e. his long-time work for the Polish service of Radio Free Europe, which lasted from 1950 to 1980. For the radio station, which had been founded in 1952, Terlecki became a valuable asset: the theatre scholar and theoretician of artistic radio who had been particularly interested in developing radio drama (the so-called Theatre of Imagination) and had published works defining its specificity, now, after the war, started a varied free-lance collaboration with the Munich-based station. Terlecki (along with Roman Palester) devised the cultural programme block, and took on the roles of programme editor, commentator, critic, reporter, and interviewer, skilful moderator of the so-called round table discussions as well as a radio drama author and adaptor. The objects of his activity were equally diverse: from history to current political initiatives (for example, when he acted as a member of Polski Ruch Wolnościowy Niepodległość i Demokracja, or: the Polish Freedom Movement “Independence and Democracy”), to matters related to culture as such, with literature and theatre included. One should also note his other, non-radio initiatives, especially at the time when he was head of the Polish Writers Abroad Union and found his allies in Giedroyc and Jeziorański in Europe and Kazimierz Wierzyński and Józef Wittlin in the US. With their help, Terlecki initiated publishing plans, organised symposiums, emigrants’ congresses, and scholarships for Polish writers and intellectuals. One might, thus, venture to say that it is the radio that was for over 20 years the focus of Terlecki’s whole writing, intellectual and artistic activity which crystallised in the form of small and synthetic wholes: the broadcasts. Two hundred programmes (including over 60 sound recordings, some with Terlecki’s voice) have survived to this day, and they all bear the stamp of the author’s individuality, though their number is disappointingly small, considering how many years Terlecki worked for the radio. Some of the broadcasts aired first by RFE were later, especially in the 1950s, published in print by Ostatnie Wiadomości (in Mannheim); some variants appeared in the London Wiadomości weekly, and since 1963 their verbatim transcripts were published by Na Antenie, the periodical belonging to the radio station. For many years, Terlecki prepared his radio „talks” and wrote as well as directed radio documentary dramas in which theatre and drama became a leading motif. In the RFE’s archive there are several dozen broadcasts devoted to these matters, the most important of which are: Dwieście lat sceny narodowej (Two hundred years of the national stage, 1965), Panorama 50-lecia Teatru Polskiego w Warszawie (A panorama of the 50th anniversary of the Polski Theatre in Warsaw,1964), Spojrzenie na teatr dwudziestolecia międzywojennego (A look at the theatre of the interwar period, 1979); O Wyspiańskim – w setną rocznicę urodzin (About Wyspiański – on the centennial of his birth,1969); O teatrze integralnie, (On theatre as a whole,1967). These materials are complemented by reviews of publications concerned with the same issues, which, thanks to the Thaw of 1956, Terlecki received from Poland quite regularly. Terlecki, moreover and perhaps most interestingly, reviewed Western theatre productions. Among the things that have survived in the archives are scripts appraising the first Shakespearean festival of 1964 and the London international theatre festival of 1965. Terlecki’s stay in the US enabled him to observe new phenomena of the time: the so-called experimental acting studio, and various experiments arising from the amateur theatre, including that of the Polish diaspora and emigrants. Terlecki’s radio dramas deserve special attention; over 40 of them have been preserved in the radio’s and Terlecki’s own archives. They consist one of the most interesting phenomena among the radio plays of RFE, representing their anthropocentric current. Both the works chosen for adaptation and the author’s original scripts to documentary plays are universal in character and treat human fate and history as encompassed by the great metaphor, thus exemplifying Terlecki’s own philosophy, which was an amalgam of personalism, sceptical activism, Christian existentialism and classical culture. Terlecki had been writing the plays with great intensity throughout the 1950s, and they were realised by experienced radio professionals, Zdzisław Marynowski and Wacław Radulski. Today, they serve as excellent examples of what radio plays of the Theatre of Imagination abroad were like in practice.

Keywords

EN

Terlecki Tymon

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Sztuki PAN
• Journal: Pamiętnik Teatralny
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 60
• Issue: 3-4(239-240)
• Pages: 307-332

Contributors

author

Violetta Wejs-Milewska

• Instytut Filologii Polskiej, Wydział Humanistyczny, Uniwersytet w Białymstoku, Plac Uniwersytecki 1, 15–420 Białystok

References

• E. Pleszkun-Olejniczakowa, Słuchowiska Polskiego Radia w okresie piętnasto­lecia 1925–1939. Fakty, wnioski, przypuszczenia, Łódź 2000.
• K. Tatarowski, Literatura i pisarze w programie Rozgłośni Polskiej Radia Wolna Europa, Kraków 2005.
• N. Taylor-Terlecka, Rok liturgiczny w eterze na przykładzie radiofonizacji Tymona Terleckiego, [w:] Miscellanea literackie i teatralne (od Kochanowskiego do Mrożka). Profesorowi Janowi Okoniowi przez przyjaciół i uczniów na 70. urodziny zebrane, Łódź 2010, t. 2, s. 460–469.
• N. Taylor-Terlecka, Wśród kolegów po piórze – perypetie pamięci i przyjaźni Tymona Terleckiego i Czesława Straszewicza, [w:] Z dziejów polskiej służby dyplomatycznej i konsularnej. Księga upamięt­niająca życie i dzieło Jana Nowaka­Jeziorańskiego (1914–2005), Gorzów Wielkopolski 2005.
• V. Wejs-Milewska, Radio Wolna Europa na emigracyjnych szlakach pisarzy. Gustaw Herling­Grudziński, Tadeusz Nowakowski, Roman Palester, Czesław Straszewicz, Tymon Terlecki, Kraków 2007.