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Invisible Country
Four Polish Plays
Edited and Translated by Teresa Murjas
Intellect Books, 2012

The late nineteenth and early twentieth century marked a tumultuous period in Poland’s history, with artists and writers working under difficult sociopolitical conditions. This book contains the first English- language translations of four plays by Polish writers in the modernist tradition: Snow by Stanislaw Przybyszewski, In a Small House by Tadeusz Rittner, Ashanti by Wlodzimierz Perzynski, and All the Same by Leopold Staff. Well-chosen and carefully annotated, these translations provide important insight into this underexplored area of Polish dramatic history and practice and facilitate greater understanding of its role in the development of European theater. Also included is a broad discussion of the characteristics of translation for the theater.

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The Morality of Mrs. Dulska
A Play by Gabriela Zapolska
Gabriela Zapolska
Intellect Books, 2007
Born during the tumultuous one-hundred-year division of Poland by Austria, Prussia, and Russia, Gabriela Zapolska (1857–1921) was an actor, journalist, and playwright who wrote over thirty plays in her lifetime. In her best-known work, The Morality of Mrs. Dulska, a tyrannical landlady harasses, exploits, and even prostitutes the eccentric cast of tenants who occupy her stone tenement building. The petty-bourgeois tragicomedy that ensues is regarded as a landmark of early modernist Polish drama.
 
A cross between Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Patricia Routledge’s Hyacinth Bucket, Mrs. Dulska keeps her purse strings tightly drawn and shows no compassion towards the sad plights of her lodgers—until she is forced to come to terms with her own possessive love for her son.  Now available for the first time in an English-language edition that firmly situates the play in the context of its performance history, Zapolska’s incisive play is an uncompromising look at gender, class, and relationships in fin-de-siècle Poland.
 
“In her introduction to Zapolska's seminal play, Murjas discusses the many intriguing challenges involved in its cultural transference, combining the perspective of translator with that of theatre practitioner. This book is a rare treat in a much neglected area of modern scholarship.”—Elwira Grossman, University of Glasgow
 
 
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Zapolska's Women
Three Plays: Malka Szwarcenkopf, The Man, and Miss Maliczewska
Gabriela Zapolska
Intellect Books, 2009

Gabriela Zapolska (1857–1921) was one of the foremost modernist Polish playwrights. Zapolska’s Women features three of her performance texts that focus on the economic and social pressures faced by women in partitioned Poland at the end of the eighteenth century. In addition to the plays, Zapolska’s Women provides a detailed biography of Zapolska, relating her life story to the themes of each play; an analysis of her significance within Polish and European literary and theatrical traditions; and background on the social and historical conditions within Poland during the time the plays were written and originally performed. This informative collection of groundbreaking plays will introduce an English-speaking audience to Zapolska’s important work.

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