Tadeusz Różewicz

Tadeusz Różewicz is one of the giants of Polish postwar literature. Staging of his play, The Witnesses, provides the public with an opportunity to see how a writer of his caliber, living under conditions where ideas cannot be expressed freely, can nonetheless communicate some of those ideas to the theater frequenting public. To achieve this Różewicz created a play of three, at first sight, unrelated parts. These could be enjoyed at two levels: first at a level where the text is seemingly transparent and acceptable to the censors. At the other level, there is a sub-text which requires some insight and reflection, but one which provides those willing to listen for the meaning between the lines, a feeling of secrets shared and a riveting intellectual experience.

In the hands of talented actors able to use very effectively the playwrights comic lines, the play elicits riotous laughter from audience. This is most evident in the first of the play's three parts, each succeeding part becoming longer that the previous one. With each, the play becomes more of a surrealist comedy provoking thought and reflection.

Różewicz, who had his first poems published in 1938, was, during the Second World War, a soldier - like his brother - in Poland's underground army. Unlike his brother, who was executed by the Gestapo in 1944, he survived the war. The five year long German occupation had been utterly brutal, a time where random street roundups meant one might - for no reason at all - find oneself on a westward Germany-bound train on ones way to becoming a slave laborer. That without even being able to let one's family know why one had not shown up for supper. It was a time when six of Poland's 36 million citizens lost their life, when most of its cities were destroyed and Polish land was used to construct Nazi concentration camps.