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Lifes a Play
Julia Holewiska
The theatricality of life a concept created in
the early 20th century by Nikolai Evreinov, a
Russian theoretician and practitioner of theatre has become one of the basic tools used
by artists, from Witold Gombrowicz to Katarzyna Kozyra
Theatrical instinct
Evreinovs concept
Witold Gombrowicz was a master of creation and autocreation, a constant theatricality of life. The photo
shows a scene from Bdzenie [The Wandering] directed by Jerzy Jarocki, a play composed of fragments of Gombrowiczs dramas, prose, and Diaries
levels: anthropological, historical, ontological,
biological, and performative.
Evreinov applied the concept of theatricality
of life not just to life and theatre, but also to
art, resulting in Original o portretistakh (Original about Portrait Painters), a collection of texts devoted to artists (including Flicien Rops
and Aubrey Beardsley) and essays. Writing mainly about symbolists, Evreinov notes that each
work is an expression of its authors personality,
although since this personality has many levels,
the artists identity is never fully consistent. He
reaches the conclusion that each artist/author
introduces a theatricality in each work, and
expresses what he is not allowed to reveal in
real life. He approaches the essence of his own
existence by using a succession of masks.
The Russian thinkers ponderings seem particularly apt in the context of artistic changes
occurring in the 20th and 21st centuries. Artists
working in the 20th century, including futurists,
Dadaists or surrealists, as well as contempora-