Teatr/ A theatre of its time

Feliks Pęczarski’s painting The Melodrama Effect, which has a resemblance to other representations of the 19th-century theatre audiences, gives us some idea about the emotional intensity with which theatre plays were received at the time and which is difficult to imagine today. The success of theatre and its high status among other arts was grounded on the one hand in its creation of illusion – which is to say a facsimile of the world, whether real or fantastic – as a main principle, and partly in the audience’s understanding of the theatrical convention, which allowed the viewers to ‘overlook’ fluffs and technical problems. A correspondent of Gazeta Warszawska made the following remarks in 1822, only weeks after the Lublin venue opened its doors:

Concerning actors, we forgive some mistakes that perhaps cannot be avoided, but senseless acting can never be justified. For instance, in The Liar, in its last act, the servant tells the audience that her Mistress is taken ill, and only later do we see the Mistress entering the stage and sinking onto a chair as we watch. … […] Our actors pay no heed to the laws of grammar and mercilessly disfigure our language; you’d hear “go! talk for the prince” or similar here.

One element used to achieve the illusion was the picture frame stage (proscenium stage), comprising an enclosed space within the building equipped with the staging “tools”: backstage, scrims and backdrops, stage sets, flying rigs, trap doors, and lighting. Another, equally important, was the realist acting, emphasised by the right make-up and costumes. Both were closely connected to drama, since the 19th-century theatre primarily drew on literature for the image of the world to be shown on stage.

Classics and brand-new plays, both domestic and international; Greek tragedies, dramas, operas, musical comedies, adaptations of prose, and even plays written specifically for the Lublin stage – all these consistent with the tastes of the era, the expectations of the viewers, and the production capabilities of the times – were offered by the theatre directors to the Lublin audience.

text: Dorota Buchwald