Theater & Politics

One of Poland's leading directors, Zygmunt Hubner (1930-89) combines intellectual insight with practical experience to offer a penetrating analysis of the manifold, complex, and unavoidable relationship between politics and dramatic art. No other art, he argues, has been so much exposed to political influences as theater. Its open access to the public and the direct contact between the spoken word and the listening audience makes theater an ideal instrument for political manipulations. Hubner traces the political influences on various theatrical forms, from ancient Greek comedies, medieval plays, and Elizabethan theater to the political plays of eighteenth-century France and Russia and the theater of modern authoritarian regimes. Hubner leads the 'average' theatergoer to the reflection needed to grasp political overtones and innuendoes in even the most 'nonpolitical' classical dramas and comedies. He devotes subchapters to government subsidies of theater, the boycotting of politically offensive performances, and the use of theater and film for political purposes. Hubner's broad survey of theatrical history, which ranges from the whole of Western theater to films such as the Hungarian movie Mefisto and from the experience of theater in totalitarian regimes to the political experience of drama in ancient Athens and modern democratic Britain, is framed by the foreword by the noted theater scholar Daniel Gerould and the afterword by the Polish director Andrzej Wajda. This nuanced critique is vital reading for all students of culture and society.