Artykuły

Before Karol Wojtyła decided to become a priest he wanted to devote his life to theatre. During the war he acted in Teatr Rapsodyczny. Then he wrote several dramas.

When the pope visited his hometown: Wadowice in 1999, he recited several lines of Haimon's part in "Antigone" in front of thousands of people. He played the role of Haimon as well as roles in other classics, Polish and foreign, when he was going to the comprehensive school in Wadowice. During the war he acted in Cracow in the Rapsodyczny Theatre, an underground group founded by his former teacher, Mieczysław Kotlarczyk. Karol Wojtyła worked on the model of this theatre where the basic means of expression were words. After the war, when he became a priest, he still supported Teatr Rapsodyczny, wrote reviews and defended the group until the theatre was closed by the communists in 1967.

Karol Wojtyła was also a dramatist. He wrote his first dramas: "Job" and "Jeremy" in 1940 inspired by the experiences of the war. "Job" ("Hiob") refers to the problem of suffering and "Jeremy" ("Jeremiasz") is a national drama. However, the pope's best known dramas are "Our Gods Brother" ("Brat naszego Boga") and "The Jeweller's Shop" ("Przed sklepem jubilera"), which were played in many Polish theatres. "Our Gods Brother", a play written about 1950, is about a Polish artist Adam Chmielowski who gave up painting to look after the poor of Cracow. In 1887 he founded the Brothers of the Third Order of Saint Francis, Servants of the Poor, known as the Albertines (named for him). The play has often been staged in Poland, among others in Teatr im. Słowackiego in Kraków, in Teatr Narodowy in Warszawa and in Teatr im. Mickiewicza in Częstochowa. "The Jeweller's Shop" (in the photo) from 1960 is a drama about love and marriage. It relates the entangled fates of three couples. "The Jeweller's Shop" was staged, among others, in Teatr Wybrzeże in Gdańsk, in Teatr Nowy in Poznań, in Teatr Stary in Kraków, in Teatr Nowy in Łódż and in Italy. Another drama, "The Radiance of Fatherhood" ("Promieniowanie ojcostwa") was written in 1964. It was staged in Teatr Rozmaitości in Warszawa, in Teatr Współczesny in Wrocław and at the Television Theatre.

All the pope's dramas were translated into English by Bolesław Taborski.